


The Key

by mrsdaphnefielding



Category: Warehouse 13
Genre: 1492, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Early Modern Spain, F/F, Sephardim
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-09
Updated: 2014-09-06
Packaged: 2018-02-11 16:02:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2074341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mrsdaphnefielding/pseuds/mrsdaphnefielding
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Toledo, 1492.<br/>(Because clearly we were lacking a B&W Early Modern Spain AU).</p><p>María Blazquez does cross herself and kneel at church, but the most heavenly creature she can think of is Haya, daughter of Abraham ha-Levi Abenhayon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Now for the Nerd Notes (you don’t need to read them, but they might help to understand the story somewhat better):  
> This story is, time-wise, situated in late 15th century Spain and centers around the Alhambra Decree (signed March 1492 by the Reyes Católicos Isabella of Castile and Fernando of Aragón) that forced the Jewish population of Spain – later to be known as Sephardim – into conversion or exile. The biggest exile community was in Salonica/Selânik (Thessaloniki) in current Greece, back then part of the Ottoman Empire. The Sephardim have largely preserved their language (basically, 15th century Spain with Hebrew and Arab borrowings, plus influences from the countries where they settled) to this day. If you speak Spanish, chances are you can read it without much difficulty. Also, to this day, you can find in Thessaloniki houses with big, old rusty keys – the keys to the houses in Spain that the Sephardim were forced to give up in 1492 (hence the story title, among other things)  
> Geographically, this story takes place in the Spanish city of Toledo, where, for a long time, Muslim, Jewish and Christian cultures coexisted in a largely civilized manner (there was no equality, but under Muslim rule, religious minorities were allowed to practice their beliefs, with some dynasties being more lenient than others; under Christian rule, things worsened gradually). Even today, Toledo, with its medieval core remarkably well preserved, gives testimony to that era between the 8th and late 15th centuries: there are medieval synagogues and the ruins of old hammams, just as well as monasteries and a cathedral next to an alcázar. The Jewish quarter – the judería – is situated in the Southwest of the old city center; part of its walls are also the city walls. While two synagogues from the 15th century are still preserved today, we know from reports of survivors of the 1391 pogroms that Toledo housed at least 10 synagogues at that time (plus five education centers).  
> Of course it’s preposterous to use this setting as a backdrop – there is so much to know, and most of it, I don’t know. I mean no disrespect. This story is nothing but a queer little fantasy, inspired initially by the architecture of Toledo, and by the coexistence of different religious cultures. I tried to research culture, wardrobe and names, but all I can offer are vague approximations. There was no concept of lesbianism in 15th century Spain, but of course there were women in love with women – aren’t there always? (which is, ultimately, my point).  
> So, a brief debriefing on Spanish history: Toledo was the capital of the Visigoth Empire as “Toletum” (name stems from a Roman settling) until 712, then it was, as Ṭulayṭula, an important city during in caliphate of Cordoba and as capital of a taifa afterwards, and fell to the Christians under Alfonso VI in 1085. It was – then already Toledo - the capital of Spain (Castile) during parts of the 15th/16th century.  
> Two of the most important things to know about Toledo: it is famous for its sword-making tradition, and it played an important part in making antique texts available to the occidental world: Greek and Latin texts that had been translated to Hebrew and Arab were then translated into Spanish (Castilian), recovering a wealth of knowledge.  
> In the late 15th century, Christians conquered the last Muslim strongholds on Spanish soil during the so-called Reconquista – and don’t get me started on how problematic THAT term is – which brings us back to the Catholic Kings Isabella and Fernando, who were behind it. And then they went after the next “minority” and caused another horrific braindrain by expulsing their Jewish population. Isabella and Fernando also founded the Inquisition in the 1470s, so I think it is fair to doubt their overall sanity and intelligence (from a postmodern perspective).  
> The song poems quoted above the chapters are taken from a recording of Sephardim laments and romances called “Endechar”, which is the old Jewish-Spanish term for lamenting.  
> Finally, a word on names: I couldn’t have Myka and H.G. run around medieval Toledo being called Myka and Helena, so I adjusted them to the setting, but preserved their initials, as far as possible (turns out there are no Jewish-Spanish last names starting with “W”). Either way, you should recognize the usual suspects without problems. I’ve left a few words and designations in Spanish (e.g. river Tajo instead of Tagus) where it makes sense for local color and where the story requires it.

 

 

_Arvolicos d’almendra que yo plantí_  
 _Por los tus ojos vedrulis_  
 _Dame la mano niña que yo por ti_  
 _Que yo por tí me va a morir_

(Arvolicos d’almendra, Sephardic Romance)

 

 

“Eh, María!”

A cherry stone hits the wall close to where she lies just beneath the roof, one square of many on a haphazard chessboard of ochre, white and dusty red.

The dense walls of the houses seem to strain even closer to one another at this hour. Behind them, the silhouette of the cathedral towers, a sharp-edged shepherd to the souls and the hands that move behind small windows. Its bells chime when even the clang of the blacksmith’s shop has stopped due to the heat.

Across the narrow alleyway, María sees the impish grin of Pedro Lopez, who mirrors her position. A shock of dark brown hair, and a head of somewhat lighter curls, burnished by the sun: like this, they gaze down into the street, where dark lines of shadow cut through the afternoon heat.

One day, when they are older, when their arms grow long enough to hold swords or cradle small children, María will simply be able to reach across the small distance and slap him when he spits cherry stones. For now, she settles for biting into another cherry herself and making the stone impact close enough to Pedro’s head to make him flinch.

He is still grinning, though, and his next attempt bounces off the shop sign with the dividers and the star, down in the street. María holds her breath, expecting her father to come barging out in anger, even at this hour. But Pedro, around a mouthful of cherry, has already found something else to hold his interest.

“María, look!”

And Maria does look, because now there is a girl walking down the empty street below, perhaps a few years older than they are. Her hair, black in a way that makes the shadows look gray, is gathered up in a net at the nape of her neck, and filigree rings of what must be pearl and gold adorn her ears. They brush against a collar of stiff lace as she walks, and her dress is of a material that seems to float around her. Behind her, a servant is holding up a fan.

This street is one of honest sweat and modest dreams, but right then, María is embarrassed by the dust and the dirt that now soil the girl’s dress, a dress made for walking across polished, ornamented tiles instead.

“She looks like a princess,” she whispers.

The next cherry slips from her grasp and María can only look on as it falls down into the street and lands in the dust, directly in front of a delicate shoe.

The girl’s head whips up.

Her skin is pale and her eyes seem to be so very dark as they take in the girl balanced high up under the roof, wild curls, an inquisitive gaze and her cheeks smeared with cherry juice.

María’s face heats up with another kind of red and she glances away, and when she looks down again, there’s just the cherry, covered in dust, and the girl is gone.

“She’s one of them.”

Pedro nods towards the head of the street, where, just around the corner, th _e judería_ starts. María has never been in there, even though there is no wall, and she remembers her father saying that there was a wall once.

But she knows the scent of freshly baked bread and the foreign lines of chant that carry over and wrap around her on some nights, when the cod stew is eaten and where the only other thing she hears in the dark is the breathing of her parents and her siblings.

Her father also says it would be better if the wall were there again.

Now, he is yelling from downstairs. “Are you still up there? I don’t want you playing with that morisco boy!”

When their arms grow long enough, they don’t spend the hour of white heat up here any longer.

Pedro is a helpmeet now at the sword smith’s shop, like his father was. He has talented hands and would make a good apprentice, but his grandfather’s name was still different, and his family has to sit in the back row at church and his skin tans much quicker than hers in the summer.

And María has to help in the shop, she is the oldest since her brother Juan is no more.

She handles dividers and quills and knotted threads and ink, she rolls parchments that depict jagged coasts and the names of foreign cities. She still sees their shapes when she closes her eyes.

She sits in the backroom and observes when the captains and chief mates come in to order maps for their travels. She watches her father’s bent back, drawing ornaments and alignments of stars, and the directions of the winds. He draws fewer ornaments now where once he took pride in them, when he still taught Juan.

When the captains don’t come for their maps, María dons the shirt and the jacket of her brother and pins her curls up under his cap, and her father, with reluctance, hands her the satchel with the precious cargo. He has to work and his back is curved, and María is quick and knows her way around the city, all the way up to the alcazar.

She carries a small dagger of steel on her chest, concealed by her jacket. Pedro has forged it, in hours that his master spends at the taverns. It has a small inlay of a red tear on its blade and has saved her from a drunken soldier or two.

And it is drunken words she hears shouted one afternoon, the empty satchel on her back, but when she rounds a corner, and then another, she sees that no one is drunk on wine, but on yelled slurs. It’s just four or five voices, but they clearly feel bolstered and María slips a hand in between two jacket buttons, until she feels the hilt of her dagger. It isn’t the best part of town.

“And I’m telling you, she’s a witch! Just look at that hair!”

“Get her away from the well!”

“They’ll all go to hell anyway, they shouldn’t be here!”

Two girls are backed against a small alleyway gate, a taller figure with black hair and a dress the color of saffron shielding a younger girl, younger than María herself, in her arms.

She does not even think about it. In a heartbeat, she has pried open the gate, and pulls both girls through just as more people begin to join the mob.

For a moment, the taller girl looks with apprehension at the dagger in María’s grip, and only later María will startle at the fact that she does not cower away, does not flinch. But this does not happen now, now there are steps behind them and hands grabbing at them and María pushes the three of them forward, into a tiny passageway as she ducks away from those hands.

A cry tells her that her dagger has found a foot or a calf, and then she is free.

Another alley, a crossroad, two patios, while she holds onto the hand of the smaller girl behind her as they disappear deeper into the maze of shadowed streets, until there are no more steps and no more voices following them.

They stop, finally, and María hears her own breathing, echoed by two other sets. She turns around and finds the older girl looking straight at her with dark eyes, and recognition sets in. The girl’s hair has come loose during their flight and her dress – María knows now that such fabric has to be silk – bespeaks riches. For a moment, something like recognition seems mirrored in her eyes, but then it is gone again.

“Thank you,” she says. Her eyes are really very dark, and there is hurt pride in her stance. “For my sister more than for myself.”

The younger girl, now once more burrowed into her side, has hair the color of copper.

“You are welcome.” María turns the dagger over in her hand and hides it again under her jacket. She feels at once embarrassed and very tall and strong, and the black-haired girl still looks like a princess.

“Can we please go home?” The younger girl asks. She still hasn’t looked at María, who now clears her throat.

“I know the way.”

“I would find it, too,” the older girl says haughtily.

But María’s way back to the shop takes her along the same streets, so she adjusts the satchel on her back and they walk together. A few people stare, and María walks a little quicker.

“Come with us.” Where the wall once used to be, the younger girl suddenly reaches for her hand.

“I don’t think –”

“Our father will thank you, too.” The older girl’s eyes are so very dark and soft.

“There is no need,“ María tries to say, but then she steps across the threshold of the _judería_. She hastily makes the sign of the cross, half hidden from view, but those dark eyes catch her and stop her short.

And then there is a stout man with gray hair at his temples and softness to his face who tells her “thank you” in a tone that has María feel embarrassed once again. “My two darling doves, the truest memory of my wife. They are all I have left.”

He is older than her own father, María gauges, but he does not look the part. He stands tall. The alertness in his gaze, she knows from the captains in her father’s shop. But there is a warmth to it, too, like a rare memory of her mother’s face in the evenings, with one her little sisters in her arms.

He says, “Haya, Hannah – inside.”

But then María is inside this house, as well, and the entrance alone is as big as the room that her family sleeps in. There are small tiles with patterns of blue, and there is the scent of sweet dates and small bowls of almonds with spices that play with María’s senses. . She stands among the boys and men of the house, at a distance to the women, and she hears the stout man talking still.

“A generation ago, no one would have dared.” He talks to several young men who look at him in earnest. “The balance is lost, with the Southern cities falling to the Kings, one after one.”

María nibbles on another almond. She still has the taste on her tongue when she returns home and her father berates her for being late.

It is not long after this that her father takes on an apprentice in the shop. He is called Gualterio Salazar, and his piercing gaze is unsettling María as it follows her. It reminds her of the one time she has seen the Kings, on Corpus Christi, as they walked in the procession. She remembers a face blotched with fervor, and that same kind of piercing gaze that had made her duck away. And silk, dresses of silk.

When she kneels in church now, María does not think any longer that the angels painted high above her head are the most beautiful beings she has ever seen. She thinks of dresses of silk and very dark eyes, and then she quickly makes the sign of the cross. It does not take away the imprint of those eyes, though. It stays with her, behind close lids, like the outlines of land and sea on her father’s maps.

 

 

* * *

 

Quote Translation:

Little almond trees I planted  
For your green eyes.  
Give me your hand, girl, because for you,  
Because for you I will die.

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

_Callí debaxxo d’ella_  
 _Hermoza como la estrella_  
 _Ya me quemí con ella_  
 _Me hizo entrar en el amor._

(Paxaro d’hermozura, Sephardic Lament)

 

Now it is Gualterio who gets to leave the shop with the satchel on his back.

María does not go by Juan any longer, not since Almería has fallen to their Kings. She does not roam the steep streets up to the alcázar, or the patios that border on the _judería_. When she leaves the house, she is wearing skirts and it is to fetch water from the well or to wash linens down by the river, down the steep incline, outside of the city walls.

Her mother is of ill health since giving birth to little Juanito, and her sister Teresa is still too young to take of the house on her own. And sometimes, her father orders her to help in the shop. María does not mind. Her hands have a confidence that Gualterio’s lacks, and her eye is better in calculating the curves and lines. She handles knotted threads and cleans quills and inkwells and rolls up parchments to be placed in the satchel.

There is much work now. The Kings have moved on to the South, but captains come and go and order maps of the far West and the sea and both her father and Gualterio are very secretive.

Gualterio bows and calls her “Doña María” to her face. But when she turns around, she can feel his eyes linger on her.

“Weaseling bastard,” says Pedro, when María tells him about it.

María does not tell him that Gualterio and her father have names far more deriding for him in return.

They talk after dusk now, quietly, and it is a cool winter evening when news reaches town that Granada has fallen, at last, and Boabdil El Chico has handed the city over to Queen Isabel.

“Al-Zugabi,” Pedro calls him, as does Pedro’s mother Juana, and his grandmother Inés, but she has not always been named Inés.

Sometimes, María takes the laundry of Juana Lopez along with her own, for the site allotted to Juana to wash is close to where the tanners work.

It is February when María walks up from the Tajo, a heavy basket of clothes on her hips and the hems of her skirts heavy with water. Her feet dig into the muddy path, numb with the cold as she struggles up the climb, past the bridge of S. Martin and through the gate into town.

“I could help you with that,” a smooth voice offers suddenly, and before María can look up or reach for her dagger, a hand reaches for the other side of the basket. It’s a hand of someone who has never been down to the river to wash, María thinks as she leans back on her heels and straightens her back, and then she is caught up in a dark gaze she has tried her best to forget.

The other girl still looks like a princess, but she is not young enough any longer to be described as a girl, neither of them is.

The first thing to come to María’s mind is that, today, she is not wearing silk, but the cloak she wears above her dress has to be made of the finest wool.  

“Juan with the dagger,” she murmurs, and her eyes follow the lines of María’s face and they feel like a murmur, too. She still has her hand on the basket.

“It’s María.”

And although it is the name of the Blessed Virgin, it has never sounded so mundane to her ears. Half the women in town carry it, and she could be any of them.

“Miriam,” she is corrected, gently, and it sounds as if it could only mean her.

They are still standing in the middle of the crowd, the basket of clean laundry between them, and María’s knuckles are red and torn from the water. She does not have to ask for a name.

Haya, daughter of Abraham ha-Levi Abenhayon, man of letters and adviser to the Duke, is not mundane at all. Her father’s father was a treasurer to the crown in turn, and their father’s fathers already worked at the court, as men of the word.

Those are things that María has not learned at home. When she asked about the men of the _judería_ , still very aware of the dagger underneath her jacket, her father had raised his hand against her. And when she had asked her mother, she begged her to stop asking questions that were unbecoming for a girl of the right faith.

But Juana Lopez has no such reservations, and thanks to her María knows that Abraham Abenhayon has the money to be one of the most influential men in town, but prefers to keep to studying and translating.

“Where are we headed?”

Haya still holds onto the handle of the basket and there are so many things María would like to say.

“It is this way,” she says instead, and Haya walks with her. She looks at her, too. It is not at all like Gualterio looks at her, and yet it is, but it does not make her skin crawl. It makes her remember the taste of almonds.

“I did not see you again in town,” Haya comments after a while. The streets are becoming more narrow, shadows high on the walls on the houses, and they are forced to walk behind one another. “You are not easy to find.”

It had not occurred to María that someone might have been looking for her.

She stops and turns, and Haya is smiling at her.

“I never truly got to thank you,” Haya says. “Back then.”

“There is no need,” María replies, just as she did then, but what she almost says is that it is reward enough to be able to look at Haya, like this. When she does not have to share the sight with anyone else, when she can see the crisp air of February paint a gentle blush onto pale cheeks.

Too soon, they arrive underneath the shop sign, and María quickly grabs hold of the entire basket. But when Haya walks away and it seems as if the houses hold their breath and withdraw into themselves to let her pass, María wishes she would turn around and look at her again.

Her hands feel warm and she does not notice the broken skin any longer. Later, she stares at the red tears when she has her fingers laced tightly together in church. She does not dare to lift her eyes to the cross and she does not understand why she feels guilty.

The next time she walks to the river with a basket of clothes, she walks purposefully by the _judería_ and her heart is beating fast in her chest. She does not see Haya, and the morning is long and gray after that, and her knuckles burn where the cold water cuts into them.

Dusk is falling into the streets when she hurries out again in the evening to the well. Pedro usually walks with her, once they are out of sight of her father’s shop, but he is running an errand for his master, and María gathers up her skirts and walks a little faster on her own.

There is another young man by the well, leaning against the wall behind it. María looks at the small windows of the surrounding houses and steps closer. There is no one else around, and she has to bend over the water to pull down the crook and hang the heavy bucket from it.

When she is just beginning to reel it in again, the young man is suddenly behind her.

“Might I be of assistance?”

The familiar voice startles María so much that she loses her grip on the crank for a moment, but then there is another set of hands on the crank, and they are slender and pale, their skin unbroken.

“Shalom aleikhem, Miriam.”

She looks into Haya’s face, hair pinned up under a cap, dressed in a men’s doublet, and winking at her. She looks like one of the young men from the _judería_ , one of those too young to have a beard yet.

“This does allow for much freer movement,” Haya concedes and María has to look away, so she looks down and then she cannot look away from Haya’s legs, and how the fabric of her trousers outlines calves, and knees, and thighs. And María thinks that if she had to draw a map, there would be no need for knotted threads or dividers, she would be able to draw this outline from memory, perfectly.

“I have no dagger, though.” Haya stretches out her hands and looks at her sleeves. She inhabits the garb with less ease, less practice than María did – she misses it, she realizes then – but she does not lack confidence.

“You don’t need a dagger,” María mutters, and her skirts brush against Haya’s trousers as the pull up the bucket, side by side by the crank.

María could have done it alone, she has done it many times, but she does not protest. Instead she says, “Thank you.” And then she asks, “Did you know I would be here?”

“I hoped.” Haya helps to lower the bucket to the ground. “It is the well closest to your house.”

María laughs because surely no one has ever given any thought to that. “But I am not here every night.”

Haya’s eyes are dark, and she looks at the houses behind María when she replies, “No, you are not.”

Steps and voices move up the street behind them, the small square with the well once more filling with the bustle of the city. María gathers her skirts to bend down and lift up the heavy bucket.

“But why –“

But when she looks up, Haya is gone.

Hung to the strap of her bucket, there is a small parcel, carefully wrapped. Curiously, María lifts it up and is enveloped by the scent of sweet honey and the tang of something she cannot quite name.

Her fingers are unsteady as she unwraps the piece of cloth and finds almonds, the kind she tasted in the house of Abraham Abenhayon.

“Those… mmreally m’ood!”

Pedro nods over a mouthful of almonds.

It is after dusk, and they are crouched underneath the small back window of his house, the voices of Juana and Inés carrying above their heads from inside.

“They are.”

María savors a bit of spice on her tongue before she bites down and feels the almond crumble against her teeth.

“Please be nice to Haya, she might give you more,” Pedro decides.

María thinks that she does not have a reason to be anything but nice to Haya, and she reaches for another almond. “I do not even know whether I will see her again.”

“It seems she is pretty determined to see you, though.” Pedro reaches for another pair of almonds. “And in trousers, huh?” He cants his head to the side and gives her a thoughtful look. “Will it become a fashion that you all run around like boys?”

María slaps Pedro`s arm, but behind her eyelids, she sees a map of slope and curve.

The next time she sees Haya, Haya is wearing skirts again. María might have been lingering around the street bordering the _judería_  and the path up to the well, even though the line at the well is not that long today.

Haya smiles upon seeing her, and calls her ‘Miriam’. She is not alone, though, Hannah is walking by her side and she is almost as tall as Haya now, and her eyes are not shy any longer.

María falls into step with them, just for a bit, until there are women gathered outside the back entrance of a building who glance their way.

“It’s the south door,” Haya explains. “To the women’s balcony.”

María nods. It has to be one of the synagogues. “You have a separate entrance?” She tries to imagine the cathedral that way, with a separate place for the women, perhaps a nave to the side. She wonders whether even the King and the Queen would have to sit apart, but the Kings are still in the South.

“We probably see the _hekhál_ better than you see your cross during mass,” Hannah says somewhat testily, and then she tugs on Haya’s arm. “We have to go.”

“Yes,” Haya says, but she looks at María for a moment longer, and then María watches her disappear into the synagogue, Hannah’s arm linked with hers.

María crosses her hands, feeling the dry, marred skin on her knuckles, and makes her way to the well. At home, she will tell her parents that the line was long.

It is the next time she comes up from the river – the water is still cold, but the days are getting warmer and it is April – that Haya is waiting for her again. It is raining, and Haya stands leaning against the wall, skirts lifted away from the rivulets that wash the dust down the street.

María blinks drops of rain out of her eyes and she forgets about the weight of her soggy skirts and the shiver of cold from the wet scarf tied around her hair.

“Shalom aleikhem, Miriam. - Might I be of assistance?” Haya is smiling again and it makes María forget that she should say ‘no’.

She thinks that if Pedro was waiting for her like this, her father would beat him out of the street. If he could. Or he would ask Gualterio to do his bidding, and Gualterio would bow and say “Of course, Señor Blazquez.” And Gualterio is strong, but María believes that Pedro is stronger.

And then she does not think about Pedro or Gualterio or her father any longer because Haya has reached for one of the handles of the basket and her fingers brush against María’s.

“You’re cold,” Haya exclaims, and now Maria’s fingers are between hers, and María does not feel cold at all, even if her skin is clammy and raindrops still cling to her lashes.

“Come with me.” And then Haya is pulling her along by her hand, off to a side alley and deep into the belly of the city. María struggles to keep up, holding onto the basket, and the rain is still falling and raindrops are clinging to the shimmering scarf that Haya wears.

They arrive at another low building, and a simple door.

“Another separate entrance?” María guesses, but this time, Hannah is not there and it is no synagogue, and Haya knocks on the door and waves her through.

A welcome wave of scented, humid warmth envelops María, and then there are hands taking her wet cloak, the basket, her scarf.

“This is the Hammam,” Haya whispers, close to her ear, and she does not bat an eye when she introduces María as “My cousin, Miriam.”

If there are any odd glances towards María – her clothes are those of a Christian woman, and their fabrics are plain in comparison to what Haya wears – at least no one speaks up. Not as they leave their shoes behind, and María does not know whether the tiles under her bare feet are indeed heated or whether it just feels that way, and not as they stand behind filigree screens, and Haya unlaces her dress.

There are other women around them, there are voices and soft laughter, but María only sees Haya.

“Come, Miriam.” There is challenge in Haya’s eyes as she wraps a sheet of linen around her torso, sweeps up her hair and keeps it in place with a ribbon. And María realizes that she has forgotten to unlace her own dress. “What are you afraid of?”

And María may be but the daughter of a humble cartographer, but she will not back away from a challenge. She thinks of Pedro, who would agree with her now. So, with a deep breath, she awkwardly wraps one of the linens around herself and follows Haya.

The tiles under their feet are slick and María cannot make out more than silhouettes around them, moving among the thick, humid steam. At first, it rests like a stone on María’s lungs, but as her skin adjusts to the heat, her breaths come easier.

Haya moves with familiarity and finds them a bench. She lets the linen glide down her back, and María quickly stares down at the bench as she sits, examining droplets of hot water on a mosaic of small tiles.

“And your hands?”

María looks up, and then she cannot look away from the long, curved slope that is Haya’s back. Through tendrils of steam, she can see Haya’s torso rise and fall, rise and fall with even breaths. Slowly, a mist of water begins to settle against her skin, making it glisten.

María swallows, her throat tight. “My hands?” She raises a hand and looks at her own fingers, uncertain what Haya wants her to do.

“Are they warm again yet?”

“Yes, yes.” Hastily, María lets her hand fall to the bench again.

Haya turns her head to smile at her. “See?”

She is leaning back now, weight resting on her hands and the linen loosely placed across her lap, and María can see nothing else but her.

She could draw a map of Haya’s legs, she knows that, but now, she is afraid that the next time she puts quill to parchment, she will draw this, and only this: the even balance of Haya’s clavicles, the arch of her throat, the gentle weight of her breasts, the slight curve of her stomach.

María has been raised to know that her body is sin, a reminder of Eve. None but the Virgin has ever escaped that damnation, and María has to pray to her, whose name she carries, and hope that her sins will be redeemable in the end.

The wet linen unfolds and falls away from her body, and her body does not feel like sin.

Haya looks at her, with eyes that are dark and hooded, and María feels, more than anything, alive.

Haya closes her eyes and lets her head fall back, a content little sigh escaping her lips. And even though María’s limbs are drowsy with thick heat, she can feel her own blood thunder against her skin. Is this what committing a sin feels like? She feels carried away and torn asunder, but she does not know what her sin would be.

And yet, when she walks home later, and her fingers tingle where Haya brushed hers against them in goodbye, María wonders whether she has done something forbidden, something that is unspeakably greater than visiting a bath house with a Jewess.

Perhaps it is written in the smile she cannot shake off, or it is palpable in her gait that is so much lighter than before, despite the heavy laundry basket. Perhaps her father can see it, too, because he slaps her across the face for her tardiness. Gualterio watches with a gleam in his eyes that threatens to extinguish the lightness she feels, but she barely notices the sting. Her mind is drawing a map, and she envisions long coastlines, curved bays and a feathered array of islands. And she will sign it, ‘Miriam’.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quote Translation:
> 
> I fell to her, beneath her,  
> Who is beautiful like the star.  
> And I got burned by her,  
> She made me fall in love.
> 
> "shalom aleikhem" (Hebrew for "peace be with you") is a common Jewish greeting; since it goes back to Biblical quotes, I figured it would work for the time and place described here, even though I have found no sources on a specific Sephardic use.  
> The hekhál is the core piece of a synagogue where the Torah rolls are guarded, a shrine of sorts that is a bit of an equivalent to the the Christian altar.  
> The hammam sequence might be pushing it a little - but there are hammam ruins beneath one of the still existant synagogues from the 15th century (El Tránsito, which now is a Sephardi museum and was, after 1492, temporarily used as a church), so I took the cue from there. At the very least, there must have been bath houses.  
> An overall note: Yes, of course my characters are much too modern in their thoughts (too little religion, too much individualism) and while that is something that always criticize in "historical fiction", I allow myself certain liberties here to have Bering & Wells still be Bering & Wells.  
> 


	3. Chapter 3

 

_Hermosa sos querida, en quantidá_  
 _A ti deseo alcansar_  
 _Se yo no te alcansí mi querida_  
 _La vida vo a’ empresentar_

 

(Arvolicos d'almendra, Sephardic Romance)

 

Among the clean laundry, she finds Haya’s scarf.

It carries the scent of Haya, of the Hammam, and of a world so close and yet so removed from her. María trails her fingers over the garment, finely woven and soft. Now she has to see Haya again, to give it back to her.

When she kneels in mass on Sunday and looks up at the magnificent carvings of the altar, María still thinks she should feel guilty of something, but she does not know of what. Her heart is jubilant like it is at the sight of the candles on Easter Sunday, and she prays for this happiness to stay with her. Surely such joy can only be given by God, and if God has given it, it cannot be anything she should feel guilty about.

In the afternoon, she tells her sister that she does not mind to fetch water and walks to the well instead of Teresa, her heart beating ahead of her steps as she rushes through the streets.

Haya is nowhere to be seen, though, neither in skirts nor in trousers, and María feels for the scarf hidden within her dress. On her way back, despite the weight of the bucket, she chooses a longer route that leads through two alleyways of the _judería_. Two women, with black hair gathered up in a net, cross her path and she almost calls out to each of them before she notices her error.

The strap of the bucket cuts into her shoulder hard enough to leave marks when she finally arrives at home. Her father and Gualterio are still in the shop, bent over parchments. Another captain of the guard has been by today, María has caught a phrase or two about maps that need to be dispatched to the South.

The next time María offers to go for water, Teresa holds onto the strap of the bucket.

“Are you secretly seeing Pedro by the well?”

María is so surprised that she laughs. “No.”

But of course she is seeing Pedro in secret, but it is not by the well, and it is not the kind of secret that Teresa means.

María thinks of Haya, whom she hopes to see secretly by the well, but of course this is not the kind of secret that Teresa means, either. Or perhaps it is, María thinks, just for a moment, when she catches sight of Haya emerging from one of the narrow alleyways of the _judería_.

Haya is once more dressed in pants and a doublet, and María looks at her lips as she says, as always, “Shalom aleikhem,” and “Miriam,” and “Might I be of assistance?”.

“I’ve got your scarf,” is the first thing María blurts out and she tries not to glance down at Haya’s legs.

“Oh, did I forget it?” Haya says with far too little surprise. Her eyes never leave María’s, and María shifts under the intensity of her gaze.

“I hoped I would run into you,” she admits. “For the scarf, I mean,” she adds quickly and they fall into step.

“I hoped so, too.” Haya smiles, and it is disarming. “Not just for the scarf.”

Haya has taken the bucket from her and is struggling to adjust the strap on her shoulder while the weight keeps interfering with her steps. María has to bite her lip to keep from smiling.

“Why are you doing this?” She is not sure she wants to know the answer, but she cannot stop herself from asking. “Why are you seeking me out?”

Haya stills. “I have been looking for you for a long time, Juan with the dagger.”

“But I am not Juan,” María protests weakly, as Haya’s gaze keeps her pinned in place.

“I like Miriam just fine,” Haya says.

María still cannot look anywhere else and they are standing in the street, the empty bucket between them until voices ahead set them back on their path.

“I could never find Juan when I walked through the city, even though I looked for him,” Haya says. “And then I saw you one day, in your dress, walking past. At first I thought you were his sister, but I recognized the way you walk.” She casts a glance to the side, at María. “And your eyes.”

María exhales and she cannot think of a single thing to say.

Haya leans a little closer. “But we met before, even.”

“We did?”

They have reached the well.

“You will not remember, most likely,” Haya says as they lower the bucket into the water with the crank. “The girl with the cherry mouth…”

The crank slips through María’s fingers. “You remember that?”

“You looked at me without judgment.”

“I thought you were a princess,” María says, and then she bites her tongue and feels heat in her cheeks.

But Haya smiles.

They meet again, at the well, even when there is no scarf to exchange. Sometimes, Haya wears skirts. Sometimes, she wears trousers.

And when María kneels in mass, she thinks of the well.

And then, one night in sleep, she is back in the Hammam. Once more, Haya stands before her, wrapped in a sheet of linen and with a fine mist of steam clinging to her hair that she has swept up, baring her neck. And the sheet pools down, slowly, unveiling Haya’s back.

Again, María raises her hand and this time, she touches a finger to Haya’s skin, draws it through droplets of steam water and follows the curve of Haya’s spine with a fingertip. And Haya turns her head to look at her, her eyes dark, and she is smiling.

She does not move away, and María steps closer, until her lips almost touch Haya’s skin. Then she leans in the last bit, just as Haya’s torso expands with a deeper breath, and closes her eyes as she kisses the space between Haya’s shoulder blades with the reverence reserved for the housel.

Haya leans back against her, her limbs warm and heavy, and María senses her sigh against her lips, and she is burning and melting away like bright ore.

Then she is in bed, upright and startled from her sleep, her lips still open and her heart racing.

“Mm…’s happened?” Teresa mumbles next to her.

“Nothing, ssh... Go back to sleep.”

But María remains sitting up, her mouth dry, and her pulse simply will not slow down. Inside herself, she is still melting.

At the cathedral, she does not dare to look up at the altar. She cannot think of any part of scripture that condemns her for a dream, but it must be a sin to melt away like this and feel so fervently, and not have it be about God.

She welcomes the bite of the water when she has to return to the river, and April sends yet more rain showers. She shivers and stumbles on her way back up to the city gate, and there is Haya, her cloak tightly wrapped around her and already soaked with rain. She sneezes before she can even say “Shalom aleikhem, Miriam,” and María feels her heart in her chest grow and change shape, something she will have to paint on a map she does not know yet, with outlines she has never drawn before.

“What are you doing out here in this weather?”

The rain is still falling, but María does not notice it any longer.

Haya reaches for one of the handles of the heavy basket. “I thought you might like some assistance, particularly in this weather.”

Haya’s skirts are wet like her own and María’s hands are red from the cold of the river and she feels the small shudder when Haya shivers against a gust of wind. But Haya continues to walk with her, and María thinks that she needs a bigger parchment if she were to draw a map of Haya and the things that she does, that she is.

She catches Haya looking at her then, shoulders drawn up against the cold, and María wishes she could take her home and invite her in, to warm herself next to the fire.

“I can do this on my own,” she tries to say, even though she does not want Haya to be anywhere else. “You should head home.”

“It is Friday, I will still go to the Hammam,” Haya says. She bites her lip and then asks, “Would you like to come with me?”

María remembers melting inside herself, and the slope of Haya’s back. Her lips tingle and she opens her mouth to say ‘no’, and hears herself say “Yes”.

Again, they step into welcome warmth, surrounded by soft voices and laughter, but María cannot hear anything beyond the sound of her own heartbeat. Haya is standing next to her behind a screen, unlacing her dress, and María knows she should look away, she should take her basket, her mud-cakes shoes, and leave.

Instead, she reaches for the ribbons of her own dress. Never has she been so grateful for a cold rainfall.

“I brought you something,” Haya says. She is already wrapped in a linen sheet, wet hair swept up, and María cannot tear her eyes away and she wants to ask, “What else?” because she has never felt richer.

“Your hands,” Haya says, and she holds out a small cup with a lid. “The Tajo waters always break your skin –”

María looks down at her reddened knuckles and hastily tries to hide them behind her back, but then her dress threatens to fall away, and then Haya’s hands are on hers.

Haya sits, she pulls María’s hands into her lap and María does not pull away when Haya pries the lid off the jar and there is a scent of thyme and evening primrose. And then Haya is spreading ointment over every angry fissure and every cracked spot of María’s hands, a shy touch at first, then firmer.

María stares down at her hands – large and marked by work around the house – in Haya’s grasp, watches Haya’s fingers smooth over her skin, slick with the balm that she is applying. And then it is not just María’s knuckles. It is the length of her fingers and the curve of her wrist, it is the pad of her thumb and the hills and valleys of her palms.  

And she is melting, she is ore on an anvil, and it is Haya who will decide its shape.

She does not dare to look at Haya, but when she glances from the corner of her eye, she sees that Haya’s head is bent, her lips parted, and she is also looking at their joined hands.

“Done,” Haya finally declares, although she has to clear her throat first. “Shall we go in?”

María only nods, she does not trust her voice.

Wrapped in a sheet of linen, she follows Haya into the steam, thick and white, that presses itself against their skin. In here, they are the same, just two more silhouettes. No one can tell their faith by looking at them, and the clothes that separate them and tell of their ties outside these rooms are gone.

And now Haya looks at her. The sheet has slid low enough to expose her neck, her clavicles, and her eyes have never been so dark.

There are other voices ahead in the mist, the vague outline of others, but to María, there is no one but Haya. She remembers her dream, the canvas of Haya’s back, and she has never wanted anything this much. She does not even know what exactly it is that she wants, but she steps closer and Haya is still looking at her, and then she is looking at María’s lips.

And María takes the last, small step to close the distance between them and presses her lips to Haya’s.

It has to be a sin, she thinks, but then she thinks it cannot be, since a feeling so pure, so all‑encompassing cannot be of the Devil. Perhaps paradise feels like this: at the threshold to something, and yet having arrived at long last.

And then Haya’s mouth opens and draws her in, and everything is wetness and heat – the steam around them, the sensation of melting from the inside out, the tongue against her own.

Her arms wind themselves around Haya because the only direction her body knows is closer, and closer still, and she never wants to stop again.

Then she is breathing as if she has been running, and Haya is looking at her again, and her hands still carry the scent of thyme that is rising up between them.

“Miriam,” Haya sighs, and it seems to reach right into María and twist a hand inside her belly.

María touches a hand to her lips, incredulous at her own actions. And they sit, together, in the steam, with small smiles curling their lips whenever their eyes meet. Until Haya, reluctantly, says that she has to go home.

“Shabbat will start soon.”

“Are you trying to convert me?” María asks when they are out on the street again, in the daylight, once more separated by custom and garb. She has blurted it out before she can think better of it, and Haya’s gaze is not as smoldering any longer.

“We do not convert,” she says with dignity. “You are born into our faith, or you are not.”

“And you do not marry outside of a faith,” María adds. It is how things are.

“But there once was a King Alfonso of your faith who loved a woman of ours,” Haya says. “She was not his wife, of course, but they were together for a long time. And no one saw the need to convert anyone.”

María is certain that this is a sin, and to talk like that, but she does not really care, not when she can walk with Haya like this.

And Haya asks, far too lightly, “Have you thought of marriage? You are long since of the age.”

“Not much.” Maria shrugs. “My family needs me, my siblings, my father at the shop…” She chuckles. “I think my younger sister thinks of it more than I do.” She looks at Haya. “Are you already promised to be married?” And she wants her to say no.

“Not yet.” Haya smiles. “Like you, I prefer to stay with my father, my sister.” She adjusts the handle of the basket in her grasp. “I suppose sooner or later, the matchmaker will find someone with whom my father agrees. But it might be a while yet. Perhaps a long while.”

María cannot find it in herself to regret that.

Then they are at the border to the _judería_ and today, María accompanies Haya to the door of her house. The scent of fresh bread hangs in the narrow, winding streets and the people who cross their path greet them with “Shalom aleikhem”.

They agree to meet after Shabbat, and after Sunday, and before they part, there is a dark alleyway where Haya kisses her cheek in goodbye.

“Two days will be long,” María sighs.

“I will be thinking of you,” Haya says.

And María thinks of Haya, she thinks of her at confession, but she does not speak of her. She thinks of her the next day before sundown, when she hears streams of chant through the window. She thinks of her in Sunday mass when she is giving thanks in her prayers.

But before Monday can roll along, something else happens, after mass.

There is a herald in royal colors in the square in front of the cathedral, still on his horse, and he is reading a proclamation. Her parents and Teresa draw closer, and so does she, and she frowns when she can finally understand the words.

_“…we knew that the true remedy for all these injuries and inconveniences was to prohibit all interaction between the said Jews and Christians and banish them from all our kingdoms, we desired to content ourselves by commanding them to leave all cities, towns, and villages of Andalusia where it appears that they have done the greatest injury, believing that that would be sufficient so that those of other cities, towns, and villages of our kingdoms and lordships would cease to do and commit the aforesaid acts._

_And since we are informed that neither that step nor the passing of sentence against the said Jews who have been most guilty of the said crimes and delicts against our holy Catholic faith have been sufficient as a complete remedy to obviate and correct so great an opprobrium and offense to the faith and the Christian religion, because every day it is found and appears that the said Jews increase in continuing their evil and wicked purpose wherever they live and congregate, and so that there will not be any place where they further offend our holy faith, and corrupt those whom God has until now most desired to preserve, as well as those who had fallen but amended and returned to Holy Mother Church, the which according to the weakness of our humanity and by diabolical astuteness and suggestion that continually wages war against us may easily occur unless the principal cause of it be removed, which is to banish the said Jews from our kingdoms.”_

“It’s about time,” her father mutters next to her.

“This is not even Andalusia,” María whispers, and she cannot quite comprehend what she is hearing.

Her father shrugs. “Andalusia or here, they’re all the same.”

But María does not hear him any longer. She is rushing across the square, into the maze of streets that will lead her down West, to the river, to the house of Abraham Abenhayon.

She realizes on her way that news travels fast. The narrow streets are crowded with people, she hears cries and yells, and in front of Haya’s house, there is Haya’s father, surrounded by several men of different ages, who all seem to be talking at the same time.

Behind them, in the door of the house, María can make out a flash of copper and the figure of Hannah. And next to her, arms crossed in front of her chest and with a thunderous glare, stands Haya.

And María cannot imagine not seeing her again.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quote Translation:
> 
> You are beautiful darling, so very much.  
> I just want to be with you.  
> If I cannot be with you, my love,  
> I will offer up my own life.
> 
> The full Alhambra Decree in an English translation can be found here: http://www.sephardicstudies.org/decree.html; the quote used in the text is taken from there.  
> Legend has it that Alfonso VIII of Castile, who resided in Toledo (and was married to Leonor Plantaget, daughter to Leonor of Aquitaine), had a longstanding love affair with a Jewish noblewoman.  
> "La noche de alhad", which si what María/Myka might have heard on Saturday evening, is a ritual sephardic song associated with the end of the shabbat. There is a recording on "El canto espiritual judeoespanol" done by Alia Musica under Miguel Sanchez (details: http://www.allmusic.com/album/el-canto-espiritual-judeoespa%C3%B1ol-mw0001827581). Regarding the rich Sephardic musical tradition(s) overall, there are a lot of examples available on YouTube (including various recordings of all the songs from which I took the chapter quotes).  
> Shabbat, II: there are a lot rules regarding what you can and cannot do on shabbat. Bathing, for example, is out because it would require someone to work to heat up the water (at least it did in 1492). Women visiting the Hammam was fairly common in Sephardi culture - e.g. on Friday in preparation for shabbat -, though I only know of sources for the Northern African Sephardim after the expulsion.  
> "moriscos" is a somewhat derogatory term for formerly Muslim Spaniards who converted, more or less on their own volition, to Christianity. "marranos" is a derogatory term for the Jewish Spaniards who got, often forcibly, converted to Christianity and who in many cases continued to practice their Jewish faith in secret.


	4. Chapter 4

_Dame la mano tu palomba_  
 _Para subir al tu nido_  
 _Mal dicho que durmes sola_  
 _Vengo a durmir contigo_

(En la mar hay una torre, Sephardic Lament)

 

Perhaps it is that she does not move within the throng of people surrounding her in the stretch of space between thick house walls. Perhaps it is that she stands still and does not speak, while all around her, desperate voices cut through the air. There is no share of that air left for María, and she is not even sure what she is doing here, but then Haya catches sight of her.

“Why are you here?”

She does not call her ‘Miriam’ and her gaze is still thunderous.

“I came as soon as I heard,” María says. She does not say: I had to see you.

“This is not your concern,” Haya says coolly, and there is that bit of stubborn pride that María has already come to know well. “I do not see anyone tossing you out of your house, or your country.”

“How could it not be my concern?” María is at a loss. “I know you did not do any of this. I know you did not convert anyone.”

Haya scoffs. “Really?”

“You could have tried with me,” María admits, her voice low. “You would have. And you did not.”

And Haya is quiet then, the tense lines around her lips soften.

“Perhaps we could appeal to the Kings –” María is grasping at something, anything. She briefly wonders who would live on this street, on this empty street, in all these houses, if all the people around her were gone.

It is Hannah who sides with her, her skirts now pushed against hers, against Haya’s, in the crowded street. “There has to be something we can do.”

María nods. “Your father, perhaps –”

“We do not even know yet what is true,” Abraham Abenhayon says. He is surrounded by a group of men and María remembers him to be taller somehow, but there still is the same commanding warmth about him. She sees a bit of it in Haya, too, with more of an edge.

“I was at the cathedral, I heard it,” María blurts out.

Abenhayon looks at her with curiosity, and he gestures for her to continue, in front of the men who keep asking him for advice. And now she is among them, in their midst, but they give her space, they do not brush against her skirts, not even accidentally, not like Gualterio does whenever he passes her in the staircase. And she is talking, and her memory is good.

“There have been rumors since March,” Abenhayon finally says. He sighs and María sees the silver in his hair, in his beard, and the sadness in his eyes. “Friends close to the court have warned me, but I did not want to believe it.”

“But you did not do anything wrong,” María says helplessly. Behind her, she feels Hannah’s nod more than she sees it.

And even with his sad eyes, Abenhayon smiles. “That may not be the point.”

The proclamation is hung for everyone to see, a parchment blotched by the mark of the royal seal. Most people in María’s street cannot read it, and they do not bother to ask.

“As long as they’re gone, that’s what counts,” María’s father says, and Gualterio nods before he has even finished his phrase.

“Yes, Señor Blazquez.”

“Witches and murderers, and they poison the wells,” Pedro’s master, the smith, says, loud enough to carry down the street and across the corner, where the _judería_ starts. “They have no place in a country of God, and I won’t have one of them as a customer ever again, no matter their money.”

“What does it say?” Pedro asks María as they stand before the decree. He looks at the lines and curves that form letters upon letters to spell out that Haya and her family and all those of her faith will have to leave Toledo and the reign within three months.

“Unless they convert.” Pedro has heard that much.

María has thought about that, more than once. She has imagined going to the cathedral on Sundays with Haya, and Haya could stay.

“Your grandfather converted,” María reminds him. “And even now, you’re only good enough to be a helpmeet at the smith’s.”

Pedro shrugs. “They’d be _marranos_ , but they wouldn’t have to leave.”

María does not think that Haya would shrug and let it pass, just like that. “There’s more.” María points at the proclamation. “If they leave, they may not take their gold or silver, or any money.”

“And how are they supposed to travel then?”

María has no answer for that. The town is full of murmurs, like an angry bee’s hive hit by a bear’s paw. When she passes the streets of the _judería_ , coming from the well, María finds the people walking a little deeper in the shadows.

Haya is not among them, and María cannot imagine her clinging to any shadows. They do not meet by the well any longer. It has been two days, two endless days, since she has seen her, and María thinks of Haya’s mouth on hers and the thought of not seeing her again is more frightening than the thought of purgatory.

She walks by Abenhayon’s house, at dusk, and her father will be mad because she is late and her mother will be too tired to say anything, but it is for naught: The windows are dark. From further ahead, she hears threads of song sailing on the air and they trail behind her steps as she hurries home, alone.

But then Haya is there, early on the third day, by the gate, as María is on her way down to the river.

María does not feel the weight of her basket or the stares of the people as she smiles and pushes through the crowd, towards a fall of black hair and dark eyes and pale features.

“Have you been waiting for me?”

She is breathless, and she cannot stop smiling.

Haya looks to the ground between them for a moment, as more women push out of the gate, toward the river, and others pour in, the ebb and flow of daylight.“I was just walking by,” Haya tries to insist, even though she was not walking at all.

There is another surge of tenderness that María adds to her map of Haya, the one whose lines she has followed these past restless nights, over and over, in her mind.

“No _Miriam_?” she asks, gently. “No _shalom aleikhem_?”

Now, Haya looks up and María involuntarily takes a small step back at seeing the past three days mirrored back at her: the yearning and the fear and the restless nights, far more bold that María even dared. And there is something else, something that makes her remember how dark Haya’s eyes can turn, and there is the sensation of melting licking at her insides again, like flames.

María has been taught to be afraid of flames, afraid of hell, but her first instinct is not to run. It is to throw herself forward and burn bright.

The laundry does not matter, nor does the bustle of people who move through the gate, in and out, and who look their way with disapproval. “Come,” she says, and she brushes past of Haya. “Come with me.”

Out of the city gate, and along the wall, away from the Tajo River. There is a ramshackle barn, it belongs to the smith for whom Pedro works, and Pedro has to tie up horses there sometimes, when clients come for swords from outside town. But the clients are few because Pedro’s master prefers the taverns, and so the door does only have hinges left. There is a ladder up to a attic with a few bales of hay and María has never climbed up here, but now she goes first and Haya, in her skirts of finest wool and the silk ornaments on her corsage, follows her.

There is daylight up here, falling in through a badly kempt roof. There is no steam to envelop them and keep the world at bay, only the heady scent of hay and the sound of their breathing.

María cannot name what she wants, but she knows that she needs to be close to Haya, closer than this, so she reaches out a hand, and Haya moves quickly, and her lips are open when they meet María’s.

This is what she wants, what she needs, María thinks, but then it is not quite true. She wants more, _something_ more, she still needs to be closer to Haya, as if she knows that Haya will catch her if she simply melts into her. She does not know how close she has to be until this yearning stops, but she knows she has to get there, and she cannot wait.

Fingers are pulling on the ties of her dress and Haya shrugs off her own skirts with impatience, fine wool pooling onto stray bits of straw. The laundry basket topples over, cushioning their fall and María’s lips find their way along Haya’s neck, onto a pale curve shoulder that she is trying to free from a sleeve. She feels Haya’s hands on the back of her head, in her hair, and she does not remember when she has closed her eyes.

A metallic clang makes them draw apart as María’s dagger clatters to the floor between them, the tight leather sheath only showing the hilt and the small, red inlay on the bottom of the blade.

“Juan with the dagger,” Haya says. And she says, “Miriam” and her voice is like nothing María has ever heard before, like she imagines the velvet lining on the royal chairs in the cathedral to be. And then Haya is kissing her again, like she did at the Hammam, and it is all wetness and heat, even though there is no steam around them.

If she could never do anything else again but kiss Haya, it would be the closest to paradise María can imagine. She has never been so much herself as in this moment, and yet she moves with a knowledge that is not hers, brushing away last bits of clothes with intent. Perhaps this is God, she thinks fleetingly, or this is how God intended her to be.

But when Haya stretches, naked and smooth, stretches up and curls a hand into María’s hair and pulls her down into her body, when María feels warm, soft skin against her own, her knowledge of what God could be realigns itself around this moment, and then God does not matter any longer: It is just Haya, and herself, and this moment.

Her hands seem to draw a map and find it, all on their own, and Haya breathes faster and she has trouble to keep her eyes open.

“Lihi,” she whispers and her lips graze María’s ear. “Not Miriam. Like this, let me call you Lihi.”

María shivers and kisses the foreign name from her lips, and she is melting, they both are, burning bright and liquid, and forged into something new, together.

She is curled around Haya, with the skin of Haya’s neck, of her back pearled in sweat and just out of reach of her lips, and she leans in and kisses the spot between Haya’s shoulder blades. There is a small, breathy sight that escapes Haya at that touch, and María wants to hear it again. And again.

She wants to forget that there are only three more months, and she cannot think of anything else. And if it is three months, just three months, she will take those months and atone for the rest of her life.

But even here, the world outside invades.

“If being close to you is a sin, did we bring this on? Is this the punishment?”

“The decree?” Haya shifts and leans up on an elbow, and one of her hands rests on María’s stomach. “It was signed over a moon ago.”

María realizes that she would have kissed Haya over a moon ago already.

“No, it is not our fault.” Haya’s voice is low and gentle. “I don’t know what God says, none of us can know, but we do not break faith, being like this.” She pauses, her hand sliding up to rest above María’s heart. “Thank you for not suggesting we convert, when you were there.”

“You never asked me to,” María says and she wishes she had never even thought about Haya coming with her to the cathedral. “Why would I ask it of you?”

Still, part of her is afraid that Haya will go to hell because she is not baptized, but María will pray, and pray hard enough to absolve both their souls.

“What was your father so mad about?” Pedro asks in the evening as they cower underneath the windows of his house. “I heard him yell all across the street, in our kitchen, and my mother is not exactly quiet when she cooks!”

“I was late with the laundry,” María admits. Pedro gives her a questioning look, and she relents. “Very late.”

“And is this the reason why you look both the saddest and the happiest I have ever seen you?”

“I…” María searches for words, but she does not have any words to describe Haya’s hand on her skin, painting a map of María, with sighs for mountains and whispers for valleys. She shakes her head and hands over a small, cloth-wrapped package.

“More almonds!” Pedro exclaims happily. “You saw Haya?”

“Yes.” But she did so much more than just see her.

“Mmou mmmike ‘er,” Pedro says around a mouthful of almonds. He swallows. “And she brings gifts. – Don’t you want any?”

But she cannot eat, her insides seem peopled with the flutter of birds’ wings, and the only thing about that her that is hungry is her skin against the night, yearning for Haya and her hands.

“Hey, wait – that’s no reason to cry.” Pedro takes the last almond out of his mouth again before he can close it. “See? I put it back.”

“That’s not it.” María looks at her hands. She hesitates. “Do you think it is a sin?”

“Eating almonds?”

María sniffles and glares at Pedro.

He sobers. “That you spend time with Haya? Because she is a Jewess, and you are not?”

“And that I like her.”

He shrugs. “She makes you smile. Smiling is good.”

“I _really_ like her,” María insists and she thinks of Haya’s eyes, deep and smoldering, just before she kisses her, kisses her like King Alfonso must have kissed his lover.

Pedro is silent for a while and when he looks at her again, María thinks that he understands far more than people give him credit for. “Do you take from the poor?” he asks. “Do you harm widows and orphans?”

“Of course not,” María protests.

“Do you break any of the commandments?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Well, then it is not a sin. At least not a bad one,” Pedro concludes. “Can I have another of those almonds?”

She gives all the almonds to Pedro and only keeps the small piece of cloth they came in, and she keeps it in her dress, against her chest.

She does not see Haya by the well again, but she sees a group of women from her own neighborhood pushing a Jewess away from the water and calling her names. And when she goes to confession, she sees the wife of Pedro’s master, the sword smith, who makes sure the priest notices the alms she is leaving, far more generous than usual.

“Some desperate Jewess sold me her jewels, very cheap,” the smith’s wife says, and she says it inside the cathedral, and she is smiling. “I sold them away, and a fair share of it belongs to God, who is ridding us of those people.”

The priest commends her, and María remembers the earrings Haya wore the first time that she saw her. She does not speak of Haya in confession. If it is no sin, it does not concern her confessor, and even if it was, she still has no words for the way she melts into Haya’s arms, and her map of Haya is hers alone.

On her way home, she takes the path that leads her through the _judería_. It is becoming a habit. Bent into the shadows, a woman crosses her path who will not meet her eyes, but María can see that her eyes are hollow and tear-stained.

When she sees Haya, they do not speak of the Decree, not of the rumors the creep along the thick walls of the town, of Jews being denied ship’s passages and of merchants not selling their goods to them any longer. The stolen hours in the barn are theirs alone, and María’s mother complains that the stains will not wash out of the laundry so well any longer.

But now they are not in the barn, now María stands in front of the house of Abraham Abenhayon, and she says, “I want to help.” She says, “Please.”

Haya will leave, she has to leave, and María will make sure that she will be safe.

Abraham Abenhayon stands in the door, kindness in his alert eyes. "Shalom berakhah ve-tovah," he says, and there is Hannah, and Haya, whose eyes light up at seeing her. A group of young men sits around Abenhayon.

“We do hold our own court, how can they even command us?”one of them asks. He gestures at María, but does not look at her. “The nonbelievers?”

“We are still subjects on their soil,” Abenhayon says.

They debate and argue, and María frowns.

“They are students of his,” Haya whispers. “This is not arguing, this is studying.”

There are almonds and sweet dates and María looks at Haya and then she sinks her teeth into a date, soft and pliant.

“Portugal,” one of the students suggests and once more, Abenhayon shakes his head.

“I do not believe any Christian country is safe for us any longer. The tide has turned. It will turn there, too. We would far better among the Moors again, in the Ottoman Empire.”

“But how shall we travel that far, without gold? And when no one will sell us a ship’s passage?”

“They will sell us passages, eventually,” Abenhayon says, and his voice is still calm. “Even if at a price too high. – But what price is too high for our faith and our lives?”

“We would need ships on our own, to not depend on greedy captains,” one of the students says fervently.

Another one rebuts him. “But how would we navigate, all the way across the sea? We would need a very good map, and no one will sell us a map!”

And María speaks up. “I can get you a map.”

There is silence for a long moment and María does not know whether it is because she has spoken, or because of what she has said.

“I can get a map, a good map,” she insists.“I will help you to leave here safely.”

“Miriam, it is?” Abenhayon looks at her with gentle hope. “My children and grandchildren will say your name with thanks, and include it in their prayers.”

Past his shoulder, Haya looks at her, her eyes dark like they are when she calls her ‘Lihi’, and when she chants her name like a prayer already.

  
 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quote Translation:  
> Give me your hand, dove,  
> to climb up to your next.  
> It's no good that you're sleeping alone,  
> I am coming to sleep with you.
> 
> A word on Gualterio/Sykes calling María's father "Señor Blazquez": it is historically not quite correct, it would be more common to call him "Don" and then add his given name, but I could not find a translation for "Warren", so I went with something that reinforces María's last name instead.  
> The Alhambra Decree was signed on March 31st, but published (meaning it was proclaimed allowed in the cities) on May 1st, 1492 (in Jewish counting, the 19th day of Omer in the year 5252). Part of the Decree was indeed that the entire Jewish population was forced to leave the country or convert within 3 months time (by August 1st). although conversion did not really stop the harassment. Furthermore - because the most Catholic kings new how to pump their state finances - the emigrating were not allowed to take gold, jewels or minted money with them. When rumors arose that some of the emigrating swallowed jewels to take them along, there were murders of disembowelment (I did, sadly, not make up that reference). Likewise, there were ship captains who abused the despair of the emigrants, charging them exorbitant sums and then just dumping them into the open sea once underway.  
> In Toledo, the Jewish population had a partially independent administration, including the right to hold minor court.  
> "Shalom berakhah ve-tovah" (שָׁלוֹם בְּרָכָה וְטוֹבָה) translates to "Peace, blessing and (all) good (to you)." and is a general blessing used among Sephardi Jews. (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/hebrewgreeting.html)  
> Also, I just realized I messe dup soemt hings regarding the Toledo Cathedral - since it was built over a course of three centuries (not counting later additions that are post-Gothic), it is at times hard to figure out which naves/windows/portals/altars/chapels/etc were installed when, also since there are So. Darn. Many. of them. So the altar retable I mentioned in the last chapter was apparently only started in 1497. Sorry about that. The English wiki offers a good and fairly detailed account on the most important features and there where- and whenabouts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toledo_Cathedral


	5. Chapter 5

_La puerta de mi querida ya se abrió_   
_De lagrimas ya se hinchó_   
_Como la primavera que ansí salió_   
_La bella ninia que amo yo._

(Arvolicos d'almendra, Sephardic Romance)

 

María’s fingers glide over the parchment, slowly, with intent. This is what she has known for as long as she can remember: ink and dividers and knotted threads, outlines of coast and land, the rose of the four winds in the corner, carefully painted names of cities she will never see.

She carries the shapes and the letters within her, a map of the world to revisit at her leisure. And she hopes with all that she is that she can form a map of Haya like that, that she can complete it in the scant weeks they have left, so that she will always, always be before her eyes.

Right now, Haya enters the room where María is working, standing bent over a large table in Abraham Abenhayon’s house.

“Don’t strain your back,” Haya mutters, her voice low, as she sets a small bowl of fragrant almonds on the edge of the table. Her other hand brushes against María’s shoulders in passing, right where the tension is beginning to coil.

María looks up, and the room around her is brighter simply because Haya is there. She adjusts the knotted thread between her fingers and squints at her map. In the upper right corner, she has drawn the rose of the four winds, and she wants to call them Hope and Adoration and Yearning and Abandon and spend days on their curved initials.

Haya slips out of the room again, quietly. She has to tend to the house, to her father, to his students whose voices María hears carrying over at times. The one person to sit with her for longer stretches of time is Hannah, whose eyes follow every of her movements, even if she does not speak.

María draws in stolen hours – before midday and before dusk, when the students are arguing, or when chants arise from the houses and wrap around her.

Sometimes, Abenhayon himself comes to see her. She fidgets under his gentle gaze, aware that she is in his house, and that this is not the barn, and he is Haya’s father. She has no words for what it is when she holds Haya, or when she has to kiss the hint of a smile off Haya’s lips or die on the spot, but if there are no words for it, God perhaps has not created it.

Abenhayon says, “Shalom aleikhem,” but he calls her María.

She has worked up the courage to ask him why he does not say Miriam, and he smiles in reply.

“Does the language matter? It is still the same name. You are still the same.”

María does not understand how he can smile and be so calm, now that the days dwindle away. “Are you not worried, Don Abraham?”

“Oh, I do worry.” He looks at her, inquisitive and gentle, and María thinks how, if he were a proper Catholic, Abenhayon would be a man that her own father would look up to: well-spoken and of wealth. “At times, God tests us, but God is still there.”

“Even if God casts you from your own land?”

María cannot understand how he does not rage. He will lose his money, his standing. María herself, who can stay and whose life or faith is not threatened by a decree, is tasting ire, feeling it rise in her throat with every line she draws on the map, each of them another signpost towards Haya’s departure.

“And God also sent you, who has a brave and kind heart, and who knows to draw a map.” Abenhayon is still smiling. “Besides, God did not write that decree. The Kings did.”

María twists a quill in her grip. “But are the Kings not commanded by God?” She should not sound doubtful, but she does.

Abenhayon cants his head to the side. “I am certain they think they are.”

Haya has entered again, she smiles, and she whispers, “He is treating you like one of his students.”

“Perhaps your God –“

“The name is another.” Abenhayon’s eyes twinkle. “But it is still the same God. – Imagine a mountain, María, and three valleys around it. And in all three valleys, there are people living.”

María looks at the mountain chains she has drawn on the map so far, and she nods.

“Now, in every valley – because it is a beautiful, high mountain, the highest of all – the people will look at the mountain, and know its shape. And if someone were to travel from one valley to another, what would they see?”

“Still the mountain?” María guesses.

“The same mountain,” Abenhayon nods at her. “But it would have a different silhouette, perhaps bear a different name. Still, would it not still be the same mountain?”

“It would,” María has to agree.

“And which of the valleys has the true sight of the mountain?” Abenhayon asks. “Which name is the correct one?”

“A mountain cannot be truer on one side,” María argues. “It is a mountain, it is bigger than the valleys, and it has different sides.”

When she looks up, both Abenhayon and Haya are smiling at her. María is still not convinced that what she is doing here is not a sin, but when she goes to church, she remembers the Samaritan who helped a stranger and was lauded by Christ.

The weeks rush by far too quickly. The first houses are emptying, windows dark and quiet at night. The map is almost done and María sorts her quills, stretches her back and reaches for an almond. She looks Haya in the eye when she bites down on it.

“I could watch you draw and measure all day,” Haya murmurs into her ear, breathlessly, when María leaves at dusk and they are supposed to say goodbye. She pulls María out of sight and into a passageway beneath dark and silent windows. “Watch you all day, and then kiss you all night.” Her lips are on María’s jaw, her neck.

Even though her body is arching towards Haya, María tries to step away. “Don’t.”

Haya stands, hands still raised to hold María in the falling dusk, and her whole stance turns to edges and angles.

“Why?”

“Because it will end soon, and you will be gone,” María says around a tight throat. “And I will not be able to kiss you anymore.” She tries to draw breath, but her throat does not work properly. “And if you kiss me now, I don’t think I will ever be able to live without it.”

“Miriam.” Haya’s voice wraps around her in the dark. “Please.”

But María takes another step back, away from the outstretched arms.

“Please see me tomorrow, then?” Haya has never sounded so desperate. “Please.”

And María is thinking of the map in Abenhayon’s house, the one that is almost finished, and she stumbles out of the passageway and down the street.

At home, she catches her father slapping Gualterio and yelling at him because there are several threads and a set of dividers missing in the store. María feels guilty about not feeling guiltier. With half an ear, she listens to Teresa’s excited chatter about Carlos, the nephew of the sword smith. He has a kind enough face, and their father actually might consider talking to his uncle about marriage.

The next morning, María is back in the barn. She is early, and she sits in the attic and looks at the patches of sunlight that fall through the battered roof and then she sees Haya rushing in, sees the despair in her gaze as she looks around the barn and then, finally, up to where María is sitting, waiting for her.

And María thinks that even then flames of hell cannot burn as bright as the joy that lights up Haya’s face. If there is just one moment that she is allowed to take with her from this life to the next, she wants it to be this one.

Haya hurries up the worn ladder, two steps at a time, careless of the bits of hay catching on the hem of her skirts.

“You came.”

María tries to say, “I am sorry,” but Haya kisses her words away, and kisses her, and then kisses her again. She shrugs out of her clothes as if they were nothing but an afterthought, and when she finally sinks into María, skin to skin, María sees tears clinging to her lashes.

She leans up to kiss them away, but the move turns into a gasp, and then another.

“I know it will end soon,” Haya says fervently, her fingers moving against María’s skin. “I know that I must leave, that we will not be like this any longer. I know that.” Her lips move along María’s neck. “And this is why I need every last moment with you, so that I will be full of you, to the brim, to last for every day ahead without you.”

And María knows that every kiss now makes it more impossible to live without these kisses then, in the time that will come. And yet she kisses Haya back.  

Haya’s lips trail along the skin between her breasts. “Lihi,” she mutters, and María does not know whether the wetness she feels is Haya’s kiss, or her tears. She wraps her arms around Haya, buries her nose in the soft fall of her hair, and she wants more moments. She wants to remember the scent of Haya’s hair and the tone of her voice as they lie curled up, raindrops falling through the roof as Haya speaks of her mother. She wants to remember how it feels, exactly how it feels, when Haya looks at her and says, “I could watch you draw all day, watch your fingers,” and then takes María’s hand and draws one of the fingers into the warmth of her mouth, slowly, and she never takes her eyes of María, at all.

“I don’t want you to leave,” María says and she holds onto Haya as tightly as she can, wishing she could indeed melt into her.

“I do not care about leaving,” Haya breathes against María’s shoulder. “I do not care where I am, as long as there is you.”

But the days run through their fingers like sand, impossible to hold, like the sunlight that falls through the roof. Some of the earnest young men that surround Abraham have left already, their voices missing from the now familiar tone of scholarly arguments. The Hammam closes. And then, one day, the map is done.

News travels through curved streets that are emptying, and the steps of the remaining sound a little louder in between the house walls. María hears the rumors of Captains who throw Jewish passengers overboard, and there are new ones every day.

“You have to leave,” she tells Haya, even as she holds onto her as if she will never let her go at all. “You have to leave now.”

But Abraham Abenhayon refuses to leave before all his students are on the road, their families, and the neighbors who still look to him for counsel. The first of August is drawing closer either way, the ninth of Ab, as he and Haya call it.

María hears the news of the first gutting at the sword smith’s shop.

“Everyone knows they swallow their jewels and pieces of gold,” the smith says derisively. “We just take back what’s ours. They know the law. And there are patrols on all roads to the East.”

But East is where Haya and her family are headed: to Catalunya, and then across the sea, towards the Ottoman Empire.

That night, María gives Haya her dagger. “You need it more than I do,” she says and she feels its comforting weight in her hand, one last time. Her thumb brushes along the red inlay at the bottom of the blade as she hands it over, and then her fingers brush along Haya’s temples, and into her hair.

Two days later, Hannah is attacked in the street.

“They kept yelling about my hair,” she says, as if she cannot quite understand what the issue is.

Next to her, Haya is even paler than a shaken Hannah. María has her hands balled into fists. “I should have been there with a dagger,” she swears and she is there, in their house, regardless of the map.

Now Abenhayon wants to leave, quickly.

“As soon as possible,” María agrees. She cannot look at Haya as she says it.

But the quick route East is no longer an option.

“We will travel in good faith,” Abenhayon decided. “ And carefully.”

But María shakes her head. “It is not safe, it is too dangerous. You have heard the rumors.”

“I am afraid everything is dangerous these days,” Abenhayon says gently. “And I am afraid that we do not have any other option. No matter through which gate we leave, someone will see us. And we cannot stay here.”

You could convert, María wants to say. “Take the river,” she says instead, suddenly. “Take the Tajo, follow it all the way to Portugal. The law has no hold there, not yet. You can get a sea passage from Lisboa.”

Abenhayon looks at her. “We would still need to get past the gates, and down to the river. And have a boat…”

“A small one,” María says. “To try and pass as a small merchant ship.” She looks at her hands, at her knuckles that the Tajo has left with marks and tears. They are always a little rough, even when Haya slathers ointment onto them and then kisses them, and María always thinks that they are too rough for Haya’s lips. “I know the river well. I know where you can get down to the embankment, mostly unseen.”

This is a sin, smuggling Jews out of town. She is surprised by how little she cares.

“We would need a map,” Haya points out. “We did not plan to go West.”

“I could draw one.” And María wants to barter with fate. For one more week, or just a few days, quiet days of aching shoulders and sweet almonds and Haya’s hand brushing across her back in passing. “But there is no time.” Not when Haya wants to travel safely, and María will make sure of that.

She looks at Hannah, who still seems shaken, her hair in disarray. And she remembers the maps her father and Gualterio are working on. Maps of the West, of the Sea. “I will get you a map,” she promises.

She will lie, and she will steal, and she will care less than she should. And Haya is looking at her in a way that makes her stop caring about anything else altogether.

“Even without your dagger, you are still Juan,” Haya says when she escorts her, out into the street, and now they glance around themselves, alert. The dark passageway lies deserted and Haya kisses the corner of her mouth, and her eyes are so, so soft when she looks at María.

She looks after her with a sigh when María leaves and wraps her arms around her middle, suddenly feeling cold, as she walks back inside.

“You will stay here, won’t you?” Hannah asks quietly. She nods in the direction of where María has left. “With her. And live as a _marrano_.”

“No, I will not,” Haya is quick to protest, perhaps too quick.

“I need your help,” María tells Pedro, later in the evening. They are whispering across the street in the attic, like they used to as children. “Can you make a large house key, big enough to hide a few jewels?” She is upfront about the reasons. “It is for Abenhayon, for his family.”

“Sure I can, in the evenings.” Pedro says, and he never even hesitates. He also says, “You really like Haya, don’t you?”

Maria takes a large breath, and then exhales again without saying anything. “It is more than that,” she finally admits.

Pedro frowns. “How could it be more than that?”

“I don't want her to get married,” María says, in a rush. “And if she were of our faith, and a man, I'd want her for a husband.”

“Well…” Pedro shrugs. “If she were a Christian, I'd want her for a husband, too,” He is unperturbed. “For a wife, I mean. She is beautiful, and imagine how she must cook, when the almonds are already that good!”

María thinks of Haya’s hands, of her fingers when she picks up an almond and offers it to her, and she wants that moment, too.

“Any day now.” Haya has to draw a deep breath. Now the dagger slides out of the folds of her dress as she takes it off, takes María into her arms, just one more time, always one more time.

María wants to push her away, and she wants to hold her forever. Suddenly, she is afraid that someday, she might forget the scent of Haya’s hair. “I can’t –” And she is crying.

They are King Alfonso and his lover, but they do not have a lifetime.

Teresa does not talk about anything but Carlos. “Marriage,” she whispers, with a certain reverence. “Can you imagine?”

“Not so fast,” their father cuts in, and they are all sitting around the table, Gualterio, her mother, her siblings, spooning up stew. “María is the older one, she has to be married first.”

And María has to laugh, a little, because her father needs her in the shop and two dowries at once are more than they can afford. Teresa does not laugh.

“María will marry Gualterio, of course,” their father announces in between two spoonfuls, as if it does not merit further mentioning. “And Gualterio will take over my shop.”

María is laughing, now a little more, because it is Gualterio, and it is ridiculous. But then she is not laughing any longer because she sees the tense line that Gualterio’s shoulders suddenly form and there is something wild lurking in his lowered gaze that sobers her up instantly. She reaches for where her dagger used to be inside her dress.

“But there is no rush…” she hears herself say. If Gualterio will take on the shop, there is no need for a dowry. He is poor enough to wear her brother’s jacket, he will not ask for much either way.

“At the end of the summer,” her father states, and it is final. “Then Teresa can get married next spring.”

“So you’re officially betrothed,” Haya bites out when María tells her the story. She crosses her arms over her chest. “My congratulations.”

“Not yet,” María says. She has not slept this past night.

“How can you be so calm?” Haya asks and she sounds angry. “I have to leave you, and you have to marry that weasel!”

“That’s what Pedro calls him, too,” María says, and she smiles fondly. She will miss Pedro. “And I will not marry Gualterio.” She looks at Haya, and she is very calm indeed. “I will go with you. Away.”

“Yes?” Haya says breathlessly and there is rapture shining in her smile.

“Yes.”

Haya is kissing her, her lips, her brow, her temples, her ear. Only then, she whispers, “But you can’t. You would be an outcast.”

“I can be Juan,” María offers. “Or Miriam.” She allows herself to look at Haya the way they look at each other when they are alone, when Haya calls her Lihi. “It would be enough. I know that we could not be like we are now. I know that someday, you will be married. But this –” She looks at Haya, more subdued now, and she whispers, “This would be enough.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quote Translation:
> 
> The door of my darling did already open,  
> Did already swell with tears.  
> Like the spring, like that did she leave  
> The beautiful girl that I love.
> 
> "Lihi" is Hebrew for "She is mine", and is also used as a female name in modern Hebrew. I'm not sure about older usage, but I could not find anything.  
> The maps of the West that are drawn at the shop of María's father are likely linked to the impeding Columbus expedition that started in August of 1492.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this chapter contains a brief scene of misogynist violence (which, given the setting, is sadly unsurprising) and mention of domestic abuse.  
> Also, if you're not of the Bering & Wells /Angst & Pain school of thought (school of feels?), you might want to hold off on reading this chapter until the resolution in the final part (#7) is available.

 

_Me dixites que t’aspere_   
_En el bodre de la mar_   
_T’asperí y no venites_   
_Yo me metí a llorar_

 

(Cuatro años d’amor, Sephardic Lament)

 

 

“You wish to leave? With us?”

Abenhayon is baffled, and perhaps he is also wondering whether this has been her plan all her along.

From behind María, Haya is quick to be offended on her behalf. “You do not want her to come with us?”

“That is not the point.” Abenhayon shakes his head. “But would that not put all of us at much greater risk? We are being hunted for attempting to convert, and traveling with a runaway Catholic girl…”

“Or perhaps that could be useful,” María suggests. “I could make connections. No one is hunting me.”

“Your family might.” Abenhayon has a way of smiling even when talking about the unpleasant. “Is the marriage arranged for you truly so horrifying? As a young person, you sometimes do not see…”

“I’ve seen that man kick at the stray dogs in the street and spit at a blind beggar,” Haya interrupts him. “He is not a choice for a husband, for anyone.”

María is trying not to bask in Haya’s protectiveness. She knows that it will come to an end eventually, whether she goes with them or not.

“I will leave,” she tells Abenhayon instead, and she can be calm, too. “But I would rather leave with you. If you would let me, I am sure I could be of use in your household. – I do not mean to convert, though,” she tacks on hastily.

Now Abenhayon looks offended. “We do not do that.” His eyes are not unkind as he regards María for a long moment. “But think about what would happen if we took you along, and if we made it. You would be among strangers, with little to no chance to practice your faith.” He sighs at María’s determined face. “I would likely not be able to arrange a marriage for you.”

Haya is still standing closely next to her and María says, “I don’t care.”

“That is easy to say now,” Abenhayon points out. “But it is hard to live, year after year. – Why don’t you simply travel to Portugal with us, and then find a new life there?”

María looks him right in the eye, even while she is so very aware of Haya by her side. “I may not be of your faith or your family,” she admits, and she stands tall. “But I would rather be with you.”

Abenhayon says nothing for a long while. Then, again, he sighs.”Fine.” He nods. “So be it, then. You helped us, and we will help you.”

And then it is the first time they say goodbye, out in the passageway, without tears and heavy hearts again. The brief hours in the barn – perhaps the last ones – are now giddy, full of plans.

“We won’t be like this,” Haya reasons, but her lips on María’s long, bare legs seem to promise the opposite. “But we will be together. _Together._ ”

It is a glorious word, María thinks, but right then, nothing is quite as glorious as the path that Haya’s mouth paints against the back of her knee and up her thigh.

“This…” María takes a shaky breath. “This, for example, is out of the question on a small boat. – With eyes everywhere…”

Haya glances up at her, wordlessly, and raises an eyebrow in challenge.

And María closes her eyes and does not want to think of anything beyond this moment, but her smile turns into half a sob.

“When you get married –“

“If,” Haya corrects her, and her arms are around María, warm and reassuring. “ _If_ I get married. – And then I would take you with me, as part of my household.”

“No.” María opens her eyes and Haya is there, dark gaze focused only on María, every breath she takes palpable against María’s skin. “I could not bear to be close and watch you being given to someone else.”

“I would rather be close to you,” Haya’s murmurs against her skin. “In any way possible.”  

María leans up on an elbow and smiles. “And if your father finds a husband for me?”

“He won’t,” Haya protests immediately and there’s a spark in her eyes that says she is willing to duel any man for María, for the right to rest in the curve of her arms. “And if some man thinks… – Also, I still have your dagger.” She trails two fingers along María’s arm, raising goosebumps in their wake. “Do you want it back now?”

Maria laughs softly, contentedly. “Give it back to me on the boat,” she suggests then. “Once we have made it, once we are out of sight of Toledo.”

There is a boat now, not too small, but not big enough to make people ask questions. It is a little run-down and it lies past where the tanners work, where one can move down the embankment without being seen.

There is also a new house key that Abenhayon carries in his coat, a line of diamonds hidden in its thick teeth and down the shaft.

And then every time is a last time.

María walks up to the cathedral one last time, to the rhythm of its bells, and prays that God will not care from where she worships Him. “It is the same mountain,” she reminds herself.

She carries the familiar weight of the bucket of water back home, one last time. She remembers Haya, Haya’s legs that day by the well, and she wonders whether she should have known all along that she would go with her.

She sits down for the stew, sees her father’s hunched shoulders, her mother’s tired face. Teresa is still talking about Carlos, now that a date and the dowry have been set.

The date for María’s own wedding is also set. Gualterio’s gaze flickers across the table, touching upon the ladle, the side of bacon on the wall, her father’s good doublet, María’s lips as she eats, as if is testing what it will feel like to own all of it.

María casts down her eyes and swallows her stew. She will disobey her father, she will break the fourth commandment. By nightfall, she will have broken the seventh and the eighth, too. She will atone, later, in a place far away under foreign stars.

She thinks of the small satchel stashed away under the roof, of the path she took from the well – past where the Hammam used to be, past Abenhayon’s house – and she remembers Haya’s quick greeting, by the window as she passed, and the whispered, “Until tonight.”

María bites the inside of her cheek to curb the nervous smile that threatens to spill onto her lips.

Now she just has to wait, and wait until night falls and everyone is asleep.

One last time, she is sneaking out, to meet Pedro underneath the window at dusk.

“So this is it, huh?”

He clears his throat, and María nods.

“Only because you helped,” she says.

“Don’t fool yourself.” He smiles, and she aches in thinking how much she will miss him. “You’d have gone anyway. I know you. You’re brave.”

“Running from a marriage and breaking the law?” María snorts. “Sure.”

“Well, brave and mad,” Pedro amends. “I wish I was as brave.”

He hugs her for long moments as they part.

“Perhaps I will leave the smith,” he says, almost in afterthought. “Let myself get drafted, try to make my luck in the King’s army.”

“Be careful,” she tells him, and she has to blink rapidly.

“Be safe,” he says, and then it is only the falling night and her heartbeat. And she waits, wide awake on her bed, listening to the even breaths around her, until the quiet of deep night brushes into the room.

She stands, and her feet know to tread the worn stairs that lead up to the roof without a sound, they have knows since María was half her size and snuck up to spit cherry pits into the street with Pedro Lopez. On her way down, she holds her breath as she takes Juan’s jacket and his cap from beside Gualterio’s bed. He sleeps curled outward, his elbows bent, like a spider easily roused from a slumber all too light.

She walks into the kitchen without a backward glance, assembles shoes and scarf, pins up her hair. And just as she moves to slip on the jacket, a voice breathes behind her, “That is mine.”

Gualterio stands in the door in his nightshirt, his hands on the doorway that he is effectively blocking.

María’s heart is racing. “I just set out to do some mending,” she says, smoothly positioning the jacket on the table in front of her. “One of the sleeves has a tear.”

Gualterio does not leave his spot in the doorway. “At this hour of night.”

María shrugs. “I could not sleep.”

“And my cap?” He nods at the cap on the kitchen table. “Does that have a tear, too?”

“I better make sure,” María offers, and she sets out the sewing kit. She will still make it to the riverbank, if she hurries a little, and if only Gualterio will go back to sleep. “I might as well make use of the hours.”

“How diligent,” he observes, and his tone makes María’s skin crawl. “You will make a good wife.”

María’s prayers – and is this heavenly punishment already? – go unanswered when Gualterio pulls up a chair, placing it between the doorway and the table.

“I might as well keep you company.”

“That’s not necessary,” María hastens to say. Her fingers shake as she tries to put the thread to the needle eye.

“Perhaps.”

He looks at her hands as she sets to sew. The satchel is out of sight, under the bench. She can feel it against her calves as she slides them backward a little. She has to think fast now, right under his eyes. The satchel is heavy enough to knock him out, if she acts quickly enough.

She wishes she still had her dagger. He is scrawny, a little shorter than she is herself, and she knows her stance is good. But her dagger is down by the river, in Haya’s hands, waiting for her. She has told Abenhayon that she will be on time, has impressed on him how important it is that they leave quickly, before anyone can get suspicious at the group of people down by the bank.

The satchel, then. It is all that she has. But even as she pulls it out, as she swings it, she sees that Gualterio is prepared in how he braces himself. He still staggers backward, but he does not fall, and with a sick feeling, María realizes that he knows, that he has known all along.

She dashes for the door, she has to, while he is still rubbing his head, but then his hands are on her skirts, in her hair.

“You are not going anywhere,” he whispers sharply, and then grunts in pain as María kicks at him, scratches in despair as she struggles, and she needs to be quiet. The moment anyone wakes, she is outnumbered, and she needs to leave, she needs to leave now.

Haya is waiting for her.

“You stay when I tell you to,” GUalterio pants, too close to her ear. “You better learn this, and soon. If you think I’d let you run off with that morisco Lopez –“

“Pedro?” For a moment, María is startled, and Gualterio’s hands close like a bench vise around her wrists. María laughs him in the face. “He is ten times the man you will ever be.”

That was the wrong answer to give, she realizes, as he throws her against the doorway.“You will not speak up to me!”

But at least they are in the doorway, and this is her last chance. She let’s herself go slack for a moment, and then slams an elbow into his gut. He wheezes in pain and she is free for a moment, two –

She does not see the heavy brass ladle until it connects with her head and she stumbles.

“Rebellious, huh?” He gasps through the haze surrounding her. “I know your secret. I followed you. To that Jew’s house.”

María stills, fighting the nausea. Something wet and warm trickles down her neck.

“You converted!”

“I did not!” María protests.

“Oh, I don’t worry,” he assures her with a laugh and she wants to throw up at the sound. “I’ll get that out of you, once we are married. And I’ll see that they are burnt at the stake for their – ”

Black spots dance in front of María’s eyes as she kicks back one last time, disoriented. She scrambles to stand, at last free of his hands.

“I will get to them when they try to leave!” he snarls behind her.

And María freezes.

If she runs now, if he follows her, she will draw attention to their flight and condemn them all. And if Gualterio looks past his jealousy to realize that she wanted to leave with Haya, with Abenhayon, all along, all he needs to do is start a ruckus and alert the guard, right now.

“Yes, that’s right,” he sneers. “I’ll make sure your damned Jewish friends end up as firewood. The old man. And his daughters, too.”

“Really?” She has to stall him, she thinks feverishly. Stall him, until Haya and her family have left. “Because I was trying to convert them. I made headway with the daughters, too.”

It is almost Haya’s name on her lips, and María thinks she has to die this very second.

“I don’t believe a word of it,” Gualterio says, and at least he is still distracted.

“Why do you think they did not leave yet?” María taunts him and she prays, she begs for Haya to leave, and not to wait. “Converting is a lot more appealing when it means you get to keep your house, your goods…”

She knows Haya is stubborn, she knows it so well. Absently, María wipes at the wetness against her neck. Her fingers come away sticky, and perhaps she is crying already.

Haya will be waiting, and Haya will wait in vain.

“Marranos, all of them,” Gualterio says with derision and the moments are still drawing out, distorting themselves.

 

 

“We have to leave.”

Abenhayon’s voice is gentle, moving through the night next to her, but Haya does not look around. She is staring up at the path to the city, her eyes straining against the darkness.

“I know she will come,” she says, and her gaze is wearing out the night. “She must have been held up.”

“Perhaps,” Abenhayon allows. He takes a careful breath before he continues. “But she is a smart child. Do not blame her if she reconsidered.”

“She did not!” Haya says so quickly that doubt is shimmering through.

“She has her family here, her whole life,” Abenhayon reminds her. “Marriages… You grown into them. With us, she would have nothing.”

“She would have us,” Haya insists.

Abenhayon says. “Anything else would be strange to her. And in a way, so would we.”

But Haya is no stranger to María, María knows her better than anyone else. And she knows that María will come. You love me, Lihi, she thinks. You would not lie to me. But she does not say that. She looks at her father’s sympathetic frown, more terrifying than her own nagging doubts.

“One more minute. Please.”

“One minute,” Abenhayon relents. They are the last ones still on shore.

And Haya scans the rocks above once more, feverishly. She listens for any sound beside the brush of dark waves to their feet and the wind in her ears. The seconds tumble by, and she wills them to stretch, to stop, until she will see María rushing down the riverbank, surefooted, a rush of wild curls and, after a moment, that impossibly wide smile that Haya sometimes still cannot believe is for her, because of her.

But there is no María now.

Haya feels for the dagger, María’s dagger, which she wears inside her sleeve.

“Haya, dove…”

Her father is calling her and in the end, he has to drag her along, pull her as she struggles against him, her eyes never leaving the path up to the city.

“Haya, we cannot endanger the others. Think of Hannah!”

Haya does not answer. It is unthinkable that something has happened to María – a young woman, at night, alone on her way out of the city, but María knows the city well, she has been Juan for many years. But it is just as unthinkable that María has reconsidered, that she will stay and let Haya leave on her own because she has decided to do so.

Haya wants to know, and she does not want to know, and the questions still swirl in her hand when she is finally standing on the boat, held by arms that are not María’s.

She cannot breathe past the ache in her chest.

“It will be fine again, Haya,” Hannah pleads, distraught, embracing her tightly, and only then Haya realizes that she herself is sobbing. The outline of the city above disappears behind the river bend, but Haya cannot see it through her tears. Absently, she strokes her fingers through Hannah’s copper hair and even as Hannah is calming down, Haya knows that, for her, things will never be fine again.

The water shimmers green in the sunrise hours later, green like María’s eyes and among the relief on everyone’s faces, Haya is numb.

“Until tonight,” she had told María, and she had not even kissed her then, and now there is another day, and there will be another night, and another and another, and on none of them, she will ever kiss María again.

María carries the basket of laundry to the river that same morning.

She has lain down and gotten up, mechanically and by sheer habit. She has washed away the blood from her neck, from the bruise along her temple – “I fell,” she tells Teresa, and Teresa does not dare to ask further – and her body aches with every step, sore from the struggle.

But down by the riverbank, where the tanners work, the boat is gone.

And María smiles.

Smiling becomes a rare treat after that, or at least Pedro does not remember her smiling again after she tells him triumphantly that Haya and her family managed to escape. Their bodies are not floating in the Tajo with their bellies slit open. They are one step closer to Portugal, to safety, and to a new life across the sea.

“But you wanted to be with them,” Pedro says.

María touches her temple. “Gualterio woke up.”

“He will regret that,” Pedro swears, but María shakes her head.

“Don’t make it worse. – He thought I wanted to run away with you.” She wills herself into something close to resolve. “Perhaps I can follow her still, at a later date.” And she does not even now where she would have to go.

“Perhaps,” Pedro says, and she loves him for it.

“Speaking of running away…” Pedro straightens. “I signed up this morning. Took a page from you.”

He has to leave soon, moving West with his unit, but the day before he leaves, Gualterio comes back from an errand with a bleeding eye and a limp. He says he fell.

“Did you have to put those ideas into his head?” Juana snaps at María when Pedro comes home in a new, stiff uniform that makes him look older and much too serious.

“Dashing,” he insists with a grin. María wishes she could find it in her to smile.

“Be thankful that she did,” Doña Inés pipes up from where she is sitting. “Boy was going to waste with that badmouth of a smith. He’s got a chance to make something of himself now. A sword does not care if it cuts a Catholic or a Moor!”

“I know, I know.” Juana sighs and wipes at her eyes. “And I am glad that he is taking a chance. But I have a right to worry, don’t I?”

There is something else before Pedro leaves, at dusk, underneath the window.

“I don’t want Gualterio to be the first,” María says, matter-of-factly. “I don’t want him to have that.”

“Oh,” Pedro says, and he nods. And than he snaps upright. “Oh!”

He does not ask any questions, he accepts her decision. It is awkward, and sad, and not uncomfortable. It does not hurt. They laugh a little, even, friends having a secret in the attic, like back when they were spitting cherry stones down into the street.

Afterwards, Maria is surprised that there is not more to it.

“Well, thank you very much,” Pedro says drolly to that and María smoothes out his tousled hair, fondly. She does not care that she has broken another commandment. But she understands, at last: Haya has been the first. It has always been Haya, and it will always be.

Pedro leaves, in his uniform, and the days drag past more heavily without him. He is not there when María, pale and with the last bit of bruise covered under a few locks of hair, is led through the street in her best dress – not that she has that many – to be married to Gualterio. Her hand is limp in his and she throws up when almonds are served at the meal afterwards.

“But you like them,” Teresa says helplessly.

And María thinks of Haya’s hands and she bites the inside of her cheek until it bleeds.

The throwing up returns with a vengeance a few weeks later, and Pedro is not there to witness that, either.

He is not there to ask about the occasional split lip or bruised cheek.

He is not there to help María carry the heavy water bucket from the well when her body begins to gain weight, when her ankles swell and her face broadens.

And it is Juana who is there – and who is swearing because there is so much blood already, and why did no one care to call for her sooner? – when it is April again, and even Gualterio looks afraid and queasy at the sight of so much blood, but the baby is strong, and Juana’s arms are covered in blood.

April, María thinks, and she is so tired. Her body is tearing, breaking into pieces, and in between she hears the rain fall into the street outside, and its cadence seems to call, Miriam.

Miriam.

Miriam.

She slips away before she can even look at her child.

“A boy!” Juana declares, and despite everything, she is smiling at the marvel in her hands.

She is smiling every time she sees him in the street as he grows up, year after year, and she always has a hug or a sweet carrot for him. Even as her own frame stoops with age and his stretches into adulthood, he stops by her kitchen window for a treat, offering an all too familiar, dazzling smile in return.

Pedro returns after four years, with a captain’s sign on his lapels and a rough beard on his cheeks, and he cries in his mother’s arms when he asks about María.

 

 

“I wonder what became of María,” Hannah says, years later, as she walks with Haya through the streets of Selanik. She only says it once because the look of wild despair that suddenly seems to coil Haya’s shoulders inward spooks her enough to never touch that issue again. “I just meant… She saved our lives, and you barely spoke of anything else until we reached Lisboa. And then…”

“I would hope that she is safe, and happy,” Haya says, and it sounds stilted. It is all that she says.

Hannah is not a girl any longer, she is married, she has children on her own. They have a new house now, they celebrate Shabbat in peace, dates and almonds are on the table. And Abenhayon, his hair now completely white, still argues with young students about the Talmud.

Haya herself marries late, very late. She bears a single child – a girl – and is widowed early. She returns to her father’s house after that and takes care of him, of others, for the rest of her days. There are few moments she claims for herself. But in the mornings of early summer, bright and early, before the sun is fully up, she will find a spot to look out across the sea and search for the rare reflection of green out on the water.

She never again eats another almond.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quote Translation:
> 
> You told me to wait for you  
> By the sea shore.  
> I waited for you and you didn’t come  
> And I began to cry.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [Diabetics, please tread with caution]

 

_Arvolicos d’almendra que yo plantí_  
 _Por los tus ojos vedrulis_  
 _Dame la mano niña que yo por ti_  
 _Que yo por tí me va a morir_

(Arvolicos d’almendra, Sephardic Romance)

 

 

The dense walls of the houses seem to strain even closer to one another at this hour, causing the eerie sensation that they are leaning towards _her_. Like those of an other, her steps echo in the maze of narrow streets. When she turns around, through a needle of light falling in between rows of houses, now and then she can make out the cathedral towers, sharp and rigged against the midday sun, and, a little further to the right, the austere outline of the alcázar.

She is lost on a haphazard chessboard of ochre, white and dusty red. Even behind her shades, her eyes are beginning to hurt from squinting against the sun. The cobblestoned streets lie deserted, the stores are closed for siesta. Only up ahead, she can see, underneath a sun-bleached marquee, a door left ajar.

She squints at the sign, it reads “Librería Del Cerro”.

“Hello?” Tentatively, she pushes the door farther open. “Is there anyone here?”

The distinct smell of books both old and new envelops her and her first thought is that her father would have loved this place.

“Yes, if you prefer reading to napping at this hour,” a voice somewhat above her says and she squints again, now against darkness in contract to the brightly sunlit street. Up on a ladder, balancing an armful of books, perches a woman.

She clears her throat. “Could you, by chance, tell me how to get to the El Tránsito synagogue?”

The woman mutters something under her breath that sounds like “…should have been a tourist guide…” and then nods briskly. “The Sephardi museum? Just step out again. Right, right and then left. Can’t miss it.”

“Thank you.” Slowly, her eyes adjust to the relative darkness of the bookstore and she remembers belatedly to push her shades out of her vision. She can see the woman atop the ladder more clearly now, sleeves of a plaid shirt curled up, hair tied back from her face and horn-rimmed glasses low on her nose.

Cute, she thinks, and she wishes that she would have another question to ask her, but instead, she steps back out into the street and turns right. She holds a little tighter onto her bag, suddenly loathe to part with its contents as her steps once more echo behind her, making it sounds as if someone was walking with her.

She does find the museum this time.

On her way back, brimming with the centuries of memories that have looked back at her, she has forgotten about the small bookstore already, until she walks past the faded marquee and sees boxes of books and postcards stands on the pavement. The door is open. She remembers the plaid shirt and the glasses and finds that she could buy at least a postcard in thanks for the directions, even though she never sends postcards.

Bent over a 1940s photo volume, Myka only looks up when she hears metal wheels screech against cobblestones and she stands just in time to see a tourist stumble to the ground with one of her postcard carousels, almost taking a box of books with her as a small shape flatters skywards.

“I know I should have stuck to books only,” she mutters and rushes out of the store and then nearly trips over her own feet.

“I am so sorry,” the woman on the ground says apologetically, while she is trying to collect postcards with one hand and push silky black hair out of her vision with the other, revealing exquisite features and dark eyes that seem to make everything else disappear or dim out of focus.

It is the tourist from before, Myka recognizes the odd, singing accent. She is also quite possibly the most striking woman she has ever seen. “If you didn’t like my décor, all you had to do was say so,” she hears herself utter, and inwardly winces at her own words. “Really, don’t worry about it,” she tries again, crouching down next to the woman. “It’s about time I sorted these, anyway.”

“Oh, no, no.” The woman is still kneeling in the street, grasping at stray postcards. “Let me help you shave, at least.”

“You want to…shave?” Myka blinks and before she can help herself, she has glanced down at hips, legs, ankles, close enough to touch.

“Help… clean up this mess,” the woman corrects herself. “I am so sorry. There was a bird – ”

She does not say ‘ _pajaro’_ , she says ‘ _pasharo’_ , and it is the most enchanting thing Myka has ever heard. “You’re Sephardi,” she realizes.

The woman dips her head. “And somewhat clumsy, I’m afraid.”

And somewhat adorable, Myka wants to add when she sees the small blush on the woman’s cheeks.

“Did you want to buy all of these?” she tries to joke as they pick up postcards from dusty cobblestones, and then she bites the inside of her cheek. There is a reason Claudia sometimes tells her not to talk.

“No, I just need this one –“ The woman picks up a postcard and does not even glance at its image. She still looks mortified, and Myka stands.

“Come on, let’s get that done first. Really, I can clean up later. Might draw in a few customers that way.”

“I have no doubt about that,” the woman says and Myka lets her walk ahead, a little lightheaded. She takes in the fall of hair, the rolled up cuffs of a button-down shirt, and then she only sees one pale, elegant hand, holding the door to her own store open for her. A slight hint of perfume brushes against Myka as she follows the woman inside and hurries behind the counter.

“One postcard, sixty-five cents.”

She tries to come up with something to say, anything, just to enjoy the cadence of the woman’s voice again. She reasons that it is out of linguistic interest, of course, but she suspects that any language would sound enticing in those tones. She watches the woman’s gaze glide over rows of books, the cash box, the small bowl of almonds placed next to it.

“Take some,” Myka offers. “They’re my favorite, I always have them in the store for my customers.”

Two elegant fingers, one almond, pale pink lips parting.

“Mhmm! Those are really good.”

“I order them up from the south,” Myka says, still hung up on that sound the woman made, and she does not even hear her own words. “Sometimes, I think people only drop by for the almonds.”

Myka places seventy cents in the cash box, hands back five, and wants to ask this unknown woman to please never leave again.

“Have you lived in Toledo all your life?” The woman asks suddenly.

“I've spent some time in Canada,” Myka says. “But most of it, yes.”

“I don’t mean to pry, I am sorry.” The woman shakes her head, and her hair falls forward and settles again on slim shoulders. “There is just something, about this city, as if it follows you – I don’t know, I have never even been here before.”

“Was your family originally from Toledo?” Myka asks.

“Yes.” Helena takes another almond and Myka wants to hang the “Closed” sign against the door. “My father always wanted me to return here, as he called it, to see things with my own eyes…” She looks at Myka, then. “Perhaps I should have come sooner.”

“You are here now,” Myka says tentatively and she does try not to let on how very elated she is about that fact, about this woman wrecking havoc on her postcard display. She leans with her elbows on the counter and then straightens again. “More almonds?”

“I cannot tear down your display and then tear through your food reservoir, too,” the woman protests, but she does take another almond.

Myka swallows in reflex.

The woman meets her eyes, looks away, looks at her again, and her eyes make the bookstore disappear, too. “Actually, I recompensation for the mess I made outside, would you allow me to invite you for a coffee?” She looks at her watch, then stands taller, shifts her weight. “Although given the amount of chaos I made, perhaps I could take you to dinner instead?”

Her smile is endearingly shy, and Myka blurts out, “Yes.” Then she clears her throat and tries for a measure of dignity. “I mean, no. That really isn’t necessary.”

“Oh, but I insist,” the woman says, and her voice drops a little. It’s low and intimate, and Myka would stumble into a postcard stand as well right about now.

“If I’m going to dinner with you, I think I should ask you for your name at least,” she says, and her own voice sounds different, too, clad in something she has only read about so far.

“Oh, of course.” The woman is flustered, and that is a good look on her, too. Myka is beginning to think that there is nothing that looks bad on her, not even a worn postcard rack. “ _Eleni_. Helena,” the woman says. “Helena Abenhayon.”

“A pleasure,” Myka says, and she leans across the space between them for the formal two kisses on the cheek, and at first she goes left, and Helena goes right, and those eyes are even darker up close. She bangs her shins on the counter, and there is the subtle brush of Helena’s perfume again. “You’re Greek?”

Helena nods. “And, apparently, also Spanish,” she says with amusement. “It’s odd to hold a passport to a place you’ve never been to.” She looks at Myka, waiting for something. “And you are?”

“Myka,” Myka hastens to say. “Myka Del Cerro.”

“ _Michal_ ,” Helena corrects softly. “Not very Spanish. Are you Sephardi, too?”

“Me? Oh, no.” Myka pushed her glasses back up on her nose and Helena is looking at her and she wishes she had at least properly brushed out her hair before hurrying out in the morning. “That’s from my mother. She’s Canadian. It’s –” She’s babbling, and perhaps Helena will reconsider dinner if she doesn’t shut up soon, but Helena still looks at her like she has tourists seen gaze at the deep green of the Tajo waters: arrested. “My grandfather left after the Civil War was lost, for Canada. My parents then returned after Franco died.”

“But your grandfather was from Toledo?” Helena looks around herself, at the shelves with books from a past century. “Everything seems to breathe history around here.”

“That’s just the dust. On the books.” Myka sees Helena’s puzzled glance and Helena herself seems to have stepped out of a century long gone for a moment. Myka decides she should stop her attempts at joking altogether. “I mean, I could really dust off the top shelf there.” She remembers Helena’s question. “My grandfather was from Toledo. This was his house, in fact. My parents later bought it back. As for the family history before that… most documents were lost in the War, but I think my family has always lived here.”

“Mine has not lived here in more than five hundred years.” Helena looks around herself, her shoulders hunched as if she feels a cool draft. “And I always scoffed at my father for that, but there’s something palpable about this city, its walls… something _familiar_. As if I had been here before.”

“Well, scientifically…” Myka tilts her head to the side. “However diluted, there is still some drop of blood within you, some make-up that has been here before. In a way.”

“In a way,” Helena concedes, and her smile is softer than the finest fabric. “The same might hold true for you.”

“I don’t know.” Myka laughs, a tad embarrassed. She scratches her head. “I don’t have half a millennium of cultivated Sephardi genealogy.”

“For my father, it was all about this.” From the way Helena says ‘my father’, Myka concludes that he has passed on. “My family used to have a house here. In the fifteenth century. It no longer stands, but my family has always kept the key. ‘This key opens the door to our house in Toledo’ – that was…” She stops herself. “I am sorry. You must have other things to do than listen to my family history.”

“Not really,” Myka says. And she does have plenty of other things to do, but none that she would prefer to this, to listening to Helena. “Besides, I started it. Canada, remember?”

Helena laughs, and then it’s her eyes again, dark and intent. “I went to the museum with two pieces today.” Only now Myka takes note of how Helena’s hands hold onto the bag that is slung over her shoulder. “And they are authentic. I _knew_ that, of course, but to hear it, among all those historic pieces…”

Now, Myka does put the “Closed” sign in the shop door. “Let’s go to the back office,” she suggests.

It’s a desk with a phone, folders full of invoices, a battered laptop. The walls, where Helena can see them, are a little uneven. Every other inch is covered in stacks of books.

“Office and storage,” Myka mumbles, while she hastily clears a chair for Helena to sit. “This house is really old, too, by the way.” She bends down to move piles of books to the side, following a system unknown to Helena, but Helena’s gaze is following the expanse of Myka’s legs in those jeans she is wearing, moving further up as the plaid shirt rides up, and there is still the taste of almonds in her mouth.

“Old, you say?” she asks, and she still does not look away.

“At least the foundations,” Myka explains, her back still to Helena and Helena looks at the curve of Myka’s hips, the subtle play of muscle in her forearms as she moves a few heavy folios. “This was a kitchen, once.” She motions at an alcove to the side. “The hearth was probably over here.” She picks up another stack of books, keeps it in place with her chin. “My father dug around a bit, when he took over the business. It was a shop for swords and military memorabilia then, the tacky tourist kind. But it seems that before, it was owned by a printer specialized in maps. The oldest reference is from the seventeenth century, to a cartographer.”

“My father would have enjoyed talking to you,” Helena says, but judged the way she looks at Myka, it seems that she is enjoying the experience herself, as well. “He was quite possibly aware of every single Sephardic manuscript in Thessaloniki.”

“You’re from Thessaloniki?” Myka has finished moving stacks around and she pulls up a chair and sits, now close to Helena, with no counter between them.

“My family seems to have grown tired of moving after leaving Spain,” Helena concedes. “It made research easier.”

“So you’re a historian?” Myka guesses.

“Me?” Helena shakes her head and Myka wonders whether her hair feels as silky as it looks. She links her fingers tightly together.

“No, that was my father,” Helena explains. “Ishua Abenhayon. – I’m a librarian. Of sorts.”

Myka is leaning forward at that. “Of sorts?” Her eyes are alert and Helena can only now see that they are green, but she feels that she has known that already.

“I work in digitalizing old sources,” Helena says. “Preservations, scans… I develop algorithms.”

Myka nods politely, but she thinks she wouldn’t mind listening to Helena lecture her on the intricacies of scanning for the remainder of the afternoon. “Your father must have liked that.”

“Not that I know of.” Helena shifts in her chair, pushes her hair back behind an ear. “My father believed in sources, the feel of the actual manuscript. I believe in digital access and preserving the source. We did not always see eye to eye. Barely ever, really.”

“And yet here you are, at the actual source?” Myka guesses gently. “In Toledo.”

“He wanted a few things ‘to return home’, to Spanish soil,” Helena says. “And I believe in sharing, but today, when the custodian looked at them…” She reaches for her bag, opens the fastening and takes out a battered case, large enough for a flute, perhaps. “It seemed very personal, all of a sudden.”

On faded velvet, there is a large, intricate key, dark with age and rust, and with tool marks along the shaft. “Legend has it that my ancestors hid their jewels in there and cut them out again once they reached their new home,” Helena explains.

“And this one?”

Next to the key, a small dagger is on display. Myka looks at the curve of the grip and its carved lines. She has reached out before she remembers to ask. “May I?”

“Please,” Helena says and Myka wonders whether that is personal, too.

Her palm closes around the worn metal. It fits perfectly into her hand.

“It’s beautiful.”

Her thumb brushes over a trace of red at the bottom of the blade, a rest of what once must have been an inlay in the shape of a tear. “I wonder who made it.” She pushes at her glasses and squints at the grip, where something seems to have been etched belatedly. “ _MB,_ ” she reads. “Is that your family?”

“I don’t know.” Helena sounds a little overwhelmed and she is looking at Myka holding the dagger, in a plaid shirt among stacks of books. “The ones we know of are all Abenhayons.”

The metal is beginning to warm against Myka’s grasp when she places the weapon back upon the velvet. Even the oldest of the books around her suddenly feel very young. “Imagine that it was made before printing even came to Spain!”

“The museum is interested in a permanent loan,” Helena says, but she does not take her eyes off Myka. “And I agree, I just… It is illogical, but I wanted to have them with me for one more day.”

“One more day,” Myka breathes. “I don’t find that illogical at all.”

And Helena is still looking at her, and before Myka can think better of it, she leans across the small space between their chairs, across the case with the dagger that glints in the light overhead, and kisses Helena’s lips.

Helena does not pull back.

“I am sorry.” Myka pushes at her glasses and blinks furiously. “I usually don’t do this.”

Helena still hasn’t pulled back. She looks at Myka, and her lips open, and she says, “I wouldn’t mind if you did that again.”

And Myka kisses her, really kisses her, and Helena’s hair is indeed as silky as it looks. She tastes of almonds and Myka thinks she would be content to spend the rest of her days doing nothing but kissing Helena Abenhayon between book stacks in her office.

But they do go to dinner that night.

Helena waits in front of her hotel, in another button-down, a little crinkled from travel, with a few buttons undone to detract from that fact. She has her hair swept up, and she thinks of glasses and plaid shirts and her flight back to Greece in two days.

“Helena?”

And Helena turns around at voice, and she always wants to turn around at that voice and find Myka behind her.

She does not wear glasses right now, which Helena regrets a little, but Myka’s eyes are still so very green. Curly hair frames her face and she wears a summer dress that falls down to her knees. Her legs are really long, and her feet look a little big in heeled sandals, and Helena is unprepared for the wave of tenderness and want that overcomes her.

It is impossible, away from everything she knows, and Myka is not even Jewish. It’s just a dinner, she tells herself. Just a dinner. And she knows she is lying.

“I’ll have to ask you to lead the way,” she says, and Myka’s hand easily slides into her own as they walk. Helena hopes that Myka will take them somewhere affordable, but she will live the next week on plain sandwiches if that is what it takes to have dinner with Myka.

They end up at a modest place with good tapas and a solid crianza, and Helena asks about 19th century editions, and 20th century editions, and then 18th century editions – Myka has a few on hold, but not many – just to hear Myka talk.

“And where do you work?” Myka asks, finally. “On your algorithms?”

“My last project ran out,” Helena admits. “I was working on the Europeana, but those are always short-term contracts, and the crisis doesn’t help matters.”

“Greece has to be worse than Spain, even,” Myka muses. “If the store wasn’t family property, I would be out of business already. As things are, I sell more trinkets and postcards than books.”

Helena loves the way Myka’s nose crinkles when she says ‘trinkets’. “You could branch out into ebooks,” she suggests. “Put a terminal in your store, if you deal a lot with tourists. Or install an e‑postcard booth!”

Myka looks at her as if she has grown a second head, but then she is smiling indulgently as Helena talks about parsing and batches and contact image sensors and output data.

“Is there anything else I should know about scanning?” Myka asks, a little out of breath, as they ride up the stuttering, worn elevator of Helena’s hotel.

“Indexing parameters,” Helena murmurs against Myka’s neck, and Myka’s eyes close involuntarily. “Color depth…” Helena’s lips move along an exposed clavicle as they stumble through the door to her room. “And of course there is the issue of resolution.” Her breath is hot against Myka’s skin.

“I have a few resolutions of my own,” Myka says and she reaches for the buttons of Helena’s shirt.

Helena looks down at Myka’s fingers, and then up into her face, and everything fits so perfectly that she cannot breathe. “Resolutions,” she repeats, lightheaded.

Myka’s hands brush her shirt away from her shoulders. “None of them involve much clothing.”

“For either of us, I hope,” Helena whispers, and her own hands tremble when she wraps them around Myka, breathes her in and feels herself melt away into the embrace.

“I don’t usually do this kind of thing,” Helena says in the morning, when Myka emerges from the small hotel bathroom and she is tall and gorgeous in the doorframe and smells of Helena’s shower lotion. Helena is already fully dressed, bag at her side.

She has found another button-down to wear and Myka wonders whether she still intends to button up the top three.

“When I am responsible for sending you out in last night’s dress, allow me to at least offer you the amenities of my hotel shower,” Helena had said, and she had already come out of the shower at that point, and Myka didn’t know whether that had been her cue to leave, or have left already. Especially if Helena ‘usually didn’t do this’.

“Me neither,” Myka says, and her voice is hoarse with the past night and with the sight of Helena, like this. She bites her lip. “But can we do it again?”

Helena takes a step forward, hair falling over her shoulder, but it does not mask her smile of relief. “I think that could be arranged.” She allows herself to look at Myka more openly, with more leisure. “I still do have another day, after all. And I was wondering whether you could perhaps show me around the sights a little?”

“All the sights worth seeing are in this very room,” Myka swears, and she takes the four steps across the room to stand in front of Helena.

Helena smiles and reaches up to brush a wayward curl away from Myka’s face. “You have seen everything already,” she points out gently.

Myka catches Helena’s hand with her own. “I would like to see it again.” Her lips ghost against Helena’s fingertips. “All of it.”

They do not leave the hotel room that morning. Or that afternoon. In the evening, Helena’s packed suitcase is leaning against several stacks of books in Myka Del Cerro’s apartment.

It is still there in the morning.

“I need to catch the bus, or I will miss my flight,” Helena states as she sets down her empty coffee mug. Breakfast at Myka’s has been much better than the paltry hotel buffet, and in bed, too.

And Myka looks at her, wearing her glasses and a carelessly, loosely tied robe, and a somewhat dazed expression. There has been very little sleep involved these past two nights. Helena reaches for the grip of her suitcase, and she wonders whether she will ever see Myka again.

She kisses her, awkwardly, at the corner of her mouth and she knows she will never forget the shade of green that Myka’s eyes are this early in the morning.

“So this is it, then,” Myka breathes.

“It would appear so,” Helena says, and she winces at her standoffish tone. She is not good at these things, and wanting to see Myka again, to never _not_ see her ever again, is not helping matters.

Her hand is on the doorknob already when Myka’s voice stops her.

“I need an ebook terminal postcard thing,” Myka blurts out. “For my store.”

Helena lets go of the doorknob and turns around, and she finds Myka.

“You do?”

Myka nods. “Still today,” she says. “Possibly, also tomorrow. And the day after that.”

Helena uncurls her hand from the suitcase grip, curls it around Myka’s neck instead. “Is that so?”

“It is,” Myka murmurs, but then Helena is already kissing her, mouth opening against her own, and Myka’s hands wrap around Helena’s waist.

Helena does install an ebook terminal at Librería Del Cerro. Eventually.

She also installs a booth for e-postcards. And a new lightning system for the display cases.

And when Myka looks up from her laptop, one evening late in her office, and blinks through her glasses and says, “The Archivo Histórico Nacional is looking to digitalize their sixteenth century sources”, Helena sends in her application.

She makes Myka send e-postcards from their honeymoon, too.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quote Translation:
> 
> Little almond trees I planted  
> For your green eyes.  
> Give me your hand, girl, because for you,  
> Because for you I will die.
> 
> The Alhambra Decree was revoken only 1968 (!), after the Second Vatican Council, and formally abolished in 1992, on the 500th anniversary of the expulsion. That same year, the Spanish government reached out to the Jewish congregations on Spanish soil. Finally, in 2014, the Spanish parliament passed a law that automatically grants descendants of those first Sephards -like Haya, in this fictional case - the Spanish citizenship in addition to the one they are holding.
> 
> Jewish Spanish (linguistic term) or Ladino (self-acclaimed term) is a fascinating language variant, and a fascinating field of research. Not only does it show a rich influence of Hebrew (word endings, plural construction, placement of accents), but since it is also a preserved version of late 15th century Spanish, it carries a semantic wealth that allows us to look at the history of the Spanish language in a different light, e.g. there are meanings preserved in Jewish Spanish that Castilean Spanish has lost over the the centuries. An example in this chapter is the verb "afeitar", that in modern Spanish means "shaving", but used to hold the meaning of "tidyng, cleaning up, putting in order" in the 15th century. 'pajaro' ('pasharo' in Jewish Spanish) means 'bird'.
> 
> A word on Spanish naming customs for those unfamiliar with the system and wondering why Myka is not called "Blazquez", or at least "Salazar": both those names would likely have gotten lost over the centuries. Spaniards get assigned two last names at birth - their father's and their mother's, usually in that order (although by now there is the possibility to change the order, but that is fairly recent), that are fixed for their whole life. Meaning that Spaniards do not change their names upon marriage. Their children, again, will retain the first last name of each parent, meaning that the second (usually the maternal) family name will be lost. So María's and Gualterio's son (who is of course actually Pedro's son, which delights Juana to no end, but we will assume that Gualterio never figured it out) would by called Salazar Blazquez, and if he had a daughter, the name Salazar would then have been lost one generation further down, so assuming there has been a blend of women and men linking the generations between María Blazquez and Myka Del Cerro Bering, there would be no common last name. God, I hope this made some sort of sense.
> 
> The Spanish Civil War (left-leaning Republicans (yes, the Republicans are the left-leaning ones in this war) vs. right-wing fascists) raged from 1936 to 1939 and ended with the the victory of the fascists. It led to a dictatorship under Franco until 1975, when he finally died and a smooth "transición" to democrarcy was made (problematic in its own right, since many of the old elites were allowed to remain in charge) with the late seventies. During the Civil War, the alcázar of Toledo, a fascist stronghold that was under siege, but not defeated, became an iconic point of reference for fascist propaganda.
> 
> The Europeana is a states/EU-sponsered translational digital collection (http://www.europeana.eu/).
> 
> The Archivo Histórico Nacional (AHN) is one of Spain's biggest archives and would love to digitalize all of their documents, if only they had the money.  
>  
> 
> Finally, thank you to all of you who have been reading along on this admittedly nerdy and sometimes rather angsty journey. Many thanks in particular for the lively and layered discussion in the comments that has made me think in a new light about parts of the story, and also about things not related to the story at all.


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